Arivaca Residents Announce Border Patrol Checkpoint Monitoring, Call for Hearing

NEWS
For Immediate Release
[January 22nd, 2014]                                                                                                                        

Contacts:   People Helping People in the Border Zone Media Team
                                                                                                                        520-398-3093
                                                                                              phparivacamedia@gmail.com

https://phparivaca.org/
                                                                                                                      

 

Tucson, AZ-  On Wednesday, January 22nd residents of the border town of Arivaca, Arizona traveled 65 miles to the Tucson Border Patrol Sector Headquarters with a message for the agency: Border Patrol, We Will Be Watching.

Arivaca residents unveiled their plans to initiate a community-based effort to monitor the Border Patrol checkpoint on Arivaca Road in Amado. See the full press statement attached. Over 1/3 of the residents of the small border community as well as ten local businesses have signed onto a petition calling for the immediate removal of the Border Patrol checkpoint, which residents report is a source of rights violations, racial profiling, harassment, unwarranted searches, economic deterioration, and overall negative effects on quality of life. Residents must pass through the checkpoint in order to leave the community.

After delivering some 230 petition signatures out of a residential population of under 700 to Border Patrol Tucson Sector Chief Manual Padilla on December 8th, 2013, residents have still heard nothing from the agency.At the press conference today, residents announced the community’s plans to begin monitoring Border Patrol operations in the absence of government oversight and accountability: “even in the militarized zone of Arivaca, we know that as a community, we have the right to peacefully document that actions of law enforcement agents operating in a public capacity. We now intend to exercise that right and to make our findings public” a PHP member stated.

Residents also called for a public hearing on the impacts and efficacy of interior Border Patrol checkpoints in their statement to the press. “We support a public hearing, or series of hearings, in which the negative effects of Border Patrol interior checkpoints can be heard and meaningfully addressed. Today we are calling on our elected representatives to respond to this urgent need”, the statement read.  Residents referenced the administrative complaint filed by the ACLU of Arizona last week, which cites numerous rights violations at the Amado checkpoint and other Arizona interior checkpoints.

Their press conference came on the same day that new DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson arrived to tour the region. Residents were not allowed inside of the Tucson Sector Border Patrol Headquarters to give their press conference; no Border Patrol or DHS officials responded to Arivaca community members. With their announcement of monitoring, residents sent a message to Johnson, Padilla, and the agency as a whole that “we are here today to state very clearly that we will NOT be ignored.”