No Beheaded Corpses In Arizona

Hackers release police reports: no increase in Mexican border violence.

The border between Mexico and Arizona is 370 miles long. Illegal immigration is therefore a major controversial issue in the state.

Republican Governor Jan Brewer never tires of warning of the supposed danger from Mexico: “We cannot afford all this illegal immigration and everything that comes with it, everything from the crime and to the drugs and the kidnappings and the extortion and the beheadings and the fact that people can’t feel safe in their community,” Brewer said in a Fox News interview a year ago.

Police reports released by the hacker group LulzSec, however, contradict Governor Brewer’s claims. The report is titled “Violence Rising in Mexico but Not in United States” and contains no indication of increasing violence among Mexican citizens.

Controversial Immigration Law

In April 2010, Arizona passed the most restrictive immigration law in the United States (SB1070). The “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act” requires police to arrest any person suspected of being in the United States illegally. The law was struck down by the Supreme Court at the last minute.

“Marines” Hunt Illegals

Right-wing extremist militia members have taken it upon themselves to police illegal immigrants. A report by the “High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Investigative Support Center” states that in October 2008 border patrol agents encountered two men wearing camouflage uniforms, armed with M4 carbines and handguns. They claimed they were hired to patrol the border and presented valid U.S. Marine Corps I.D. cards.

In all, the hackers released more than 700 Arizona police documents via the file-sharing protocol BitTorrent. The data file “Chinga la Migra” is 446.6 megabytes in size. LulzSec justifies its action by saying, “We are targeting AZDPS specifically because we are against SB1070 and the racial profiling anti-immigrant police state that is Arizona.”