In this Arizona town, the border crisis hasn’t slowed down, it’s sped up

SIERRA VISTA, Ariz. — An unexpected storm was leaving its final drops on the dusty road back to the edge of the United States when the mayor of Douglas, Arizona, received the kind of message he has become all too accustomed to.

A “smuggling vehicle,” attempting to evade Border Patrol agents, had crashed to a stop on the highway just north of town, said the text sent to Mayor Donald Huish at 3:59 p.m. on Wednesday. Local and state law enforcement had barely arrived at the rolled over car. “5 occupants are in the vehicle. No details yet on extent of injuries.”

Cochise County is at the crux of an unseen side of the border crisis, Huish told the Deseret News. It doesn’t make headlines like some border towns — think Eagle Pass, Texas — for massive surges in asylum-seekers. But that’s because many of the immigrants entering the country through Douglas, and its neighboring population center, Sierra Vista, aren’t looking for legal protection at all.

“We don’t get the asylum-seekers,” Huish said. Instead, his community is traversed by a group, many of them young men clothed in camouflage , who don’t appear in the stories about rising border crossings. These are the “gotaways.”

An illicit industry has emerged to take them from the border to the interior of the country without ever coming into contact with law enforcement for processing, said Huish and Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels. The journey usually involves hired American drivers — often teenagers — who race “load cars” filled with immigrants who entered the country illegally through the residential areas of the county, filling the suburban air with the now-common siren wail of a high-speed police chase.

These scenes have become a new feature of life during the current presidential administration, according to Cochise County residents on both sides of the 2024 election. The county is noted for its steady rate of border-related crime, even as apprehensions are falling in most other places along the southwest border compared to last December’s highs .

Almost every single Border Patrol sector has experienced a dramatic decline overall in border crossings in fiscal year 2024. The Tucson Sector, of which Cochise County forms a major part, experienced an increase of 61% and more fentanyl seizures than most other sectors combined.

The county’s unique immunity to the Biden administration’s recent restriction on asylum claims may be one reason why former President Donald Trump has decided to visit on Thursday. The Republican Party’s presidential nominee announced he would hold a press conference overlooking stretches of his unfinished border wall to pin the blame for the nation’s historic number of border crossings on “border Czar Kamala Harris,” on the same day Harris is set to give her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

A political ploy though it may be, the optics of Trump at the border while Harris officially becomes Democrats’ preferred successor to President Joe Biden may help Trump contrast the policies that have shaped life along this stretch of the border during the last two presidential administrations.

How border policy impacts Cochise County

Huish — born and raised in Douglas — remembers the time “before the wall,” before Trump, and Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, erected barriers that pushed most foot traffic away from the city of 16,500. The wall provides additional security and funnels many migrants to areas that have better surveillance, Huish said.

Huish also remembers how Trump-era policies like “Remain in Mexico” and Title 42 freed Border Patrol agents to focus on attempts at illegal entry instead of asylum processing. Now, Huish said, his city resources are strained trying to provide police assistance to overwhelmed Border Patrol agents.

Multiple times over the last three years, the Border Patrol became so overwhelmed it was forced to drop off hundreds of migrants in Douglas as “unsheltered” street releases , after little coordination with local government or charities.

“The local Border Patrol is very open and sensitive to the community. They work with us. But many times their hands are tied due to directives that are given up above and it drives them and us nuts,” Huish said. “Under Trump, it was never a concern, it was never a topic of discussion.”

Dannels, the chair of the National Sheriffs’ Association border security committee, said his emphasis isn’t on the “politics,” but on the night-and-day difference in messaging and behavior coming from the White House.

“This my fourth decade of doing this. I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly, and this is the ugliest I’ve ever seen it,” Dannels said.

Biden and Harris criticized Republicans for rejecting a bipartisan border bill in February that would have created a hard cut off for asylum claims while increasing funding for security and asylum judges. They have also touted the decline in border crossings as evidence that new executive orders are having an impact.

But Dannels said the policy changes have not had an impact on Cochise County because the real problem is a lack of communication with local leaders and law enforcement about what policies will actually help.

Cochise County had around 1,530 reported border crimes in fiscal year 2023, Dannels said. And they are on track to hit that same number again. These crimes — while mostly committed by U.S. citizens engaged in “international smuggling” — are a good indicator of why the Biden administration’s executive orders have done little to improve the quality of life in Cochise County: they allocate resources to turning away the “give-ups” instead of catching the “gotaways.”

“These people don’t want to ‘give up’ because they can’t — criminal records, countries of interest, illicit drug traffickers — these are people that don’t care about the country, don’t care about you and I. They just got to get in the country to do their business with the cartels,” Dannels said.

Earlier this year, Sierra Vista Mayor Clea McCaa — who will reportedly join Trump for his press conference Thursday — said that such rhetoric exaggerates the actual danger faced by border communities and can make it harder to attract business and visitors.

Ken Budge, the mayor of Bisbee, Arizona, a border town west of Douglas, said Harris’ promise to sign bipartisan border legislation like the bill that the GOP killed in the Senate is proof she wants to solve the problem instead of campaigning on it.

“Crossings at Arizona’s border continue to decrease thanks to the executive actions of the Biden-Harris administration,” Budge said in a statement. “The data is clear: Vice President Harris is the only candidate who has a record of standing up for Arizona border communities like mine and can be trusted to support and fix this issue.”

How border security impacts Cochise County voters

Greg and Gretchen Lamberth, longtime Sierra Vista residents, voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. But this year they will vote for Harris, they said.

The couple believe border security and immigration — as two separate issues — must be a top priority for the next administration. They have been affected by the terror that “load drivers” have brought to their community as much as anyone. A crash involving one such smuggler occurred at the intersection a block away from their home earlier this year, and another injured multiple bystanders on the other side of town in the last few weeks, they said.

But they feel Trump’s platform of tariffs and mass deportation will hurt the economy and see him as untrustworthy on immigration after he helped torpedo the Senate legislation because he thought it might hurt his reelection chances.

“It was the most selfish thing in the world,” Greg said.

Yvonne Mayer, and her daughter Jean Bronson, recognize Trump’s divisiveness — “I don’t think anybody really likes him,” Bronson joked — but they see him as being the obvious choice to return a sense of safety to Sierra Vista.

Migrant smugglers speed through their neighborhood so regularly that the two no longer feel confident driving through a green light without waiting to check both ways. Like the Lamberths, Mayer and Bronson could easily list off a number of crashes that involved “load drivers.”

“There’s a lot of danger to ordinary citizens, people on the road, people even on the streets,” Mayer said.

Unchecked immigration also poses a burden for taxpayers who are citizens, Mayer believes, saying Trump’s tough stance, including on ending welfare benefits for migrants, will result in many undocumented residents “self-deporting.” With the increase in drug trafficking and human smuggling, Bronson said she is just glad there’s a candidate willing to tackle border security head on.

“I don’t see the Biden side of it even really caring,” Bronson said. “At least Trump is like, ‘this is an issue; we need to deal with it.’”

Having grown up and gone to school in Sierra Vista, Christine Coplen — now a young mother of four children — is shocked by how her hometown has changed.

“I wouldn’t let my kids play in the front yard anymore because there are constantly high speed chases that come up and down” the road she lives by, Coplen said. “You always hear the sirens coming, and then you just see the cars, you know, flying by.”

The change over the last four years has been stark, according to Coplen. The beginning of the Biden administration appeared to give migrants, and cartels, a “green light” to cross the border and now Border Patrol agents are “rundown,” “exhausted” and understaffed. Coplen has close relationships with Border Patrol agents who she said have told her that current policies elevate the needs of immigrants over American citizens.

“My hope is that America will see and vote for Trump,” she said.

Voters in Arizona — where Trump lost by the smallest margin on the 2020 electoral map — are as undecided as ever. Trump’s 3 percentage-point lead in an average of polls against Biden has disappeared with Harris atop the ticket. The Cook Political Report has declared the state a “ toss up .”

But for many in Cochise County, according to Huish, the decision between Trump and Harris is a decision between two very different memories of what their community was like, and how it could be again. “That’s why I think this election is critical.”