McCain Gets Tough on Border Security

In calling for National Guard troops to guard the Arizona border, Sen. McCain is hoping to use the issue of border security to balance grassroots concerns over his support for immigration reform.

John McCain, after months of appealing to conservative Republicans in Arizona with increasingly conservative economic positions, is now doubling down on the issue of border security.

In a recent letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, the former Democratic governor of Arizona, McCain wrote,

I am asking you and the administration to immediately reconsider your position and send National Guard troops to our southern border region.

McCain hopes to gain credibility on border security issues with conservative Arizona Republicans – key voters in the August Republican primary.

Illegal immigration, among the most important issues in Arizona politics, is among McCain’s weakest political positions and JD Hayworth’s strongest.

Senator McCain’s weakness stems from his co-sponsorship with Ted Kennedy of the 2007 “comprehensive” immigration reform bill - a bill that JD Hayworth, then a congressman from Arizona, strongly opposed.

The bill was wildly unpopular among conservative Arizona Republicans and has left its mark on Arizona politics ever since. Conservatives criticized the bill for not focusing enough on border security and promising citizenship to illegal immigrants already in America. This latter provision was dubbed “amnesty” by critics and has been at the heart of conservative attacks on McCain ever since.

While non-border state conservatives see illegal immigration mainly as a social and economic stressor, Arizona Republicans also see it as a straightforward law-and-order issue. Illegal immigration flows moved from Southern California and Texas into Arizona in the 1990s after the Clinton Administration reorganized its border security plan.

As a result, 15 years of unfettered illegal immigration into Arizona has seen increased environmental damage, kidnappings, drug trafficking and thousands of immigrant deaths from exposure and dehydration.

Indeed, the murder of an Arizona rancher on his own border-adjacent ranch inspired McCain’s letter to Napolitano.

Such border security problems have bred an aggressively anti-immigration bloc within the Arizona Republican Party, a bloc best personified by Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The sheriff has made a point of using county law enforcement resources to enforce Federal immigration laws, patrolling largely Hispanic neighborhoods, arresting suspected illegal immigrants and detaining or deporting them.

Similarly, the Minuteman Coalition has organized a civilian effort to catch illegal immigrants in the Arizona desert.

The border situation became so unmanageable in recent years that even Democratic Governor Napolitano declared a state of emergency and requested that National Guardsmen be stationed along the Arizona-Mexico border.

Are McCain’s efforts too little, too late? Though McCain has often balanced his support for immigration reform with calls for border security, his reputation on the topic is mostly settled in Arizona conservatives’ eyes. It will be nearly impossible for McCain to win hardcore border hawks away from Hayworth.

But, by taking a tougher stance on border enforcement and mostly staying out of upcoming immigration reform efforts, McCain will likely retain enough Republican votes to make it out of the primary alive.