Blog: Jan Brewer Cites Violence in Mexico as Spillover into Arizona
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The debate over Gov. Jan Brewer’s description of headless bodies in the Arizona desert has eased, but she may have revived it with a comment in a new interview with the New York Times Magazine.
Asked about whether she had mis-stated the level of border violence in Arizona, Brewer argued she hadn’t and cited a recent fatal shootout — in Mexico.
In the interview, Times reporter Andrew Goldman asked: When you signed Arizona’s immigration law in 2010, you cited concerns about growing border violence. But according to the F.B.I., violent crime dropped in Arizona almost 14 percent the previous year.
Brewer answered: As the saying goes, there are lies, damned lies and statistics. Fifty thousand people in Mexico have been murdered. Puerto Peñasco, 60 miles south of our border, just had five people and a police officer killed. That is like part of Arizona, and it is spilling over into our state.
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