The Arizona Guardian

By Dennis Welch
The Arizona Guardian

Appearing on a local television show Sunday morning, Gov. Jan Brewer described how bad Arizona's illegal immigration problem has gotten.

"Our law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert either buried or just lying out there that have been beheaded," she said.

But officials with six county medical examiners offices in the state, including four from counties that border Mexico, say they have never heard of such attacks.

 

The Arizona Guardian contacted the coroners' offices in Yuma, Pima, Pinal, Maricopa, Santa Cruz and Cochise counties. All of them said they'd never investigated an immigration-related crime in which someone's head had been head cut off within their respective jurisdictions.

Plenty of immigrants have died after entering the country illegally, officials with the medical examiners offices said. Some died for lack of water crossing the Arizona desert. Others were killed in violent confrontations with drug cartels that smuggle narcotics and humans.

Their statements are significant because their offices would have investigated and known about any violent deaths.

Janice Fields, who works for a private company that acts as the corner's office for Cochise County, said police have brought in two human skulls found in the desert during the past four years.

But none of them, Fields said, were the result of a beheading. Investigators identified one of the victims as a U.S. citizen, she said. The other human head remains unidentified.

Just because a skull is found, she said, doesn't mean someone's head was cut off.

"Once they die in the desert, the animals tend to get a hold of them and start moving their body parts around," Fields said.

In recent weeks the media and the governor's political opponents have criticized her for some of her claims about illegal immigration.

Brewer had said 87 percent of illegal border crossers had prior criminal records. Federal immigration authorities were unable to confirm the statistic and Brewer's administration could not cite where they got the number.

Last week, the governor, said a majority of all immigrants coming into the country illegally worked as drug couriers for Mexican crime syndicates. The statement was roundly rejected and her comments quickly spread throughout the country.

Members of her campaign staff stopped short of saying she misspoke. They did say the governor made some "missteps" and would do better with citing statistics in the future.

Brewer appeared on Channel 12's "Sunday Square Off" last weekend. During the show, Brewer said people in Arizona were living in fear. She said that in some cases parents were scared to send their children to school.

Toward the end of the show, Brewer was asked about her earlier claims that people were being beheaded. Brewer stood by her statements and said "our law enforcement" agencies had said they were finding decapitated bodies in the desert.

When asked by the Guardian on Tuesday which law enforcement agencies told the governor about the beheadings, Brewer spokesman Paul Senseman said he didn't know.

"I'm not privy to her private public safety meetings," he said.

Senseman said the governor never said people were getting beheaded in Arizona.

"I'm not aware of any statements where the governor specifies where any crimes were committed," he said.

Senseman said the media was parsing words with the governor and have overlooked the bigger picture of escalating violence south of the border.

The governor is trying to stop the same type of violence in Mexico from spreading into Arizona, he said. Criminal gangs in Mexico routinely execute people, including last week when a gubernatorial candidate for a Mexican state was assassinated.

Senseman says the Mexican people have to fear such violence every day, with beheadings a regularly happening on Mexico's side of the border.

"This tactic of beheading is one of their (organized crime gangs) signature calling cards," he said.

Sunday's statements by the governor were not the first time she's conjured up the image of beheadings when talking about illegal immigration.

Earlier this month, the governor was talking about immigration on the Fox News program "On the Record" with Greta Van Susteren, one of several appearances she's made on the show in recent weeks.

Van Susteren came to Arizona to interview the governor. She asked Brewer about the state's new immigration law, SB 1070, and the controversy surrounding it.

Brewer said most of the state and the country back the bill and "it's another tool for us to be able to use in order to get our borders under control."

"We cannot afford all this illegal immigration and everything that comes with it, everything from the crime and the drugs and the kidnappings and the extortion and the beheadings and the fact that people can't feel safe in their community," she said on the show, which aired June 17. "It's wrong! It's wrong!"