Earlier this year, I reported that a bill was moving around the Arizona legislature what would allow Arizona to build its own border fence without the help of the federal government. Last last month, Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) signed the bill into law. Now, it’s sponsor “is counting on the generosity of Americans” to pay for it. Reuters reports:

“Unfortunately, the state is broke and quite frankly we can’t take on this massive project by ourselves,” says the senator who sponsored the legislation. His initial goal is to raise $50 million in donations. “That would be a good, healthy start.”

If the federal government won’t finish its fence along Arizona’s roughly 370 miles of border then the state will, the Republican says. He and his allies are still trying to figure out the cost of the fence and what it might look like.The senator’s goal is to build a contiguous, solid fence “and have the entire border completely and properly secured.”

Federal estimates put the cost of building a mile of solid border fence at $3 million but Smith says the state will rely on inmate labor and donated supplies to keep costs down

Yet, there’s a reason why the federal government hasn’t finished the border wall. A 2009 GAO report found that the U.S. spent $2.4 billion since 2005 to erect the unfinished 600 miles of new fence along the US-Mexico border. It’ll cost $6.5 billion to maintain over the next 20 years and push most border crossers to more remote and dangerous areas which makes the human smuggling business even more lucrative. Meanwhile, the border wall has served more as a speed bump than a roadblock as migrants and smugglers have always found new and creative ways to get over, through, and around it.

At a Senate hearing on border security in April, El Paso County Judge Veronica Escobar warned that “vilifying immigrants, building expensive, ugly walls, and encouraging hysteria and xenophobia only hurts our border communities, our commerce and the economy of the nation.” Rather than spending money on what Escobar describes as “a rusting monument that makes my community look like a junkyard,” she is hoping for money from the Merida Initiative, comprehensive immigration reform, and better technology and equipment for the international ports of entry.

People are free to waste their money on whatever they want, but Arizona probably won’t be able to turn around and use those donations to build its own fence. The Constitution gives the federal government supreme authority “in the general field of foreign affairs, including power over immigration, naturalization and deportation.”

For past several years, Republicans have repeatedly argued that they will not support comprehensive immigration reform until the border is secured. In 2006, current Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) stated that putting millions of undocumented immigrants on a path to legalization without meeting certain border security benchmarks would place “the cart before the horse.” “We spent a lot of time, effort and money getting more security on the border. But we’re nowhere close to having the kind of secure borders that Americans want,” said Boehner.

So, it comes as a surprise that Republicans are rallying behind a bundle of sharp spending cuts that include slashing $600 million from border security and immigration enforcement funds. Today, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), chairman of the House Budget Committee, told Fox News’ Chris Wallace that he’s willing to defend each and every one of the spending cuts Republicans are proposing:

WALLACE: Let’s get specific, because the Democrats say, “look, it’s very easy to talk about a big number, it’s very easy to talk about a specific percentage.” But let’s get into some specific programs of what what Republicans are going to be offering this week.

Let’s look at the cuts: $3 billion for the Environmental Protection Agency; $2 billion for job training, $600 million for border security and immigration enforcement; and $1.6 billion for the National Institutes of Health; $500 million for the COPS program which puts more police on the streets.

Congressmen, when it gets down to those specifics, are you willing to defend all those cuts?

RYAN: Yes, because last year, these agencies got double and triple digit spending increases. [...] We cannot continue down this path of having double and triple digit spending increases on government agencies. No matter how popular sounding these programs are, they mortgage our children’s future and they compromise our economic growth today.

Watch it:

Spending on immigration enforcement has soared since 2002 from $7.5 billion to over $17 billion in fiscal year 2010. Yet Republicans have continued to demand more resources be directed at the border and enforcing immigration laws as a prerequisite to giving comprehensive reform the slightest consideration.

It’s true that throwing more money at the border without fixing the nation’s broken immigration system is a waste of limited resources and money. The border is already supposedly “safer than its ever been” and it won’t get much safer without providing economic migrants with the legal channels to enter the U.S. so border patrol can focus more on actual threats to public safety. If Republicans weren’t so intent on rejecting these well-supported facts as part of a broader effort to block comprehensive immigration reform, they might have an easier time justifying at least one of their proposed spending cuts.

Yesterday, around the same time Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) announced that the state of Arizona is countersuing the federal government due to its “failure to protect Arizona from invasion,” amongst other things, a state senate panel approved a bill to let the governor start taking donations to build a border fence. The East Valley Tribune reports:

The proposal by Sen. Steve Smith, R-Maricopa, allows for construction of a new barrier on private property, with the consent of the landowners. Estimates are that would cover about a third of the approximately 370 mile long border, with the balance either on the Tohono O’odham reservation or federal land. [...]

Smith said he has no firm idea of what it might cost to build a suitable fence. But he said that the costs to the state could be minimal if the state is able to get private donations.

Smith also suggested that it’s not incompetence that’s preventing the federal government from building a border wall. He suggests that the government is actually trying to protect the drug cartels’ lucrative drug trade. According to him, it’s a “little secret” that the feds “don’t want to shut the border and the flow of drugs that are coming in here because of how powerful and how wealthy these cartels are.”

If Brewer signs off on Smith’s proposal (which I’m assuming she will), it represents a pretty major contradiction to sue the federal government for failing to deliver on its duty to secure the border and protect Arizona from an “invasion” and then think it’s somehow constitutional to turn around and build a border wall on its own. For the sake of consistency, Republicans running the state of Arizona can’t have it both ways. In legal terms, the Supreme Court has held that “the supremacy of the national power in the general field of foreign affairs, including power over immigration, naturalization and deportation, is made clear by the Constitution.” And in practical terms the Department of Homeland Security has prioritized border security initiatives that have proven to be far more effective than constructing a costly border wall.

The government has shifted its focus away from expanding the border wall because it’s expensive and inefficient. According to a 2009 GAO report, so far, the U.S. has spent $2.4 billion since 2005 to erect the unfinished 600 miles of new fence along the US-Mexico border. It’ll cost $6.5 billion to maintain over the next 20 years because rather than preventing people from crossing into the U.S. because some border crossers simply seek a way to go over, under, or through it. The border wall has also pushed most border crossers to more remote and dangerous areas which makes the human smuggling business even more lucrative.

Meanwhile, it doesn’t appear the border has put a huge dent in drug smuggling or illegal immigration. “The existing border fortifications do not keep undocumented migrants out of the US. Not even half are being apprehended on any given trip to the border, and of those who are apprehended, the success rate on the second or third try is upwards of 95 percent,” stated Wayne Cornelius, director emeritus of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California in San Diego. “There is no reason to believe that additional investments in the fence project – both physical fencing and the new “virtual fence” – will create an effective deterrent.”

Over the past couple of years, lawmakers have repeatedly pointed to the alarming levels of drug-related violence that is unraveling on the Mexican side of the southern border in a way that suggests that the horrific crimes are spilling over into the U.S. This deceptive line of reasoning has most often been used either to argue against comprehensive immigration reform or support harsh immigration measures such as SB-1070, the law that was recently passed by Arizona. Earlier this week, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano called on politicians to stop exaggerating the levels of violence occurring on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico:

The verdict is that our approach is working. We have strengthened the southwest border in ways that many people did not think possible. And our partnership with Mexico along the border is very strong.

It is inaccurate to state — as too many have — that the United States’ side of the border is overrun with violence or out of control. This statement often made to score cheap political points is just plain wrong.

Shortly thereafter, a coalition of border city mayors chimed in to denounce a recent op-ed written by former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AK) which claimed that Al Qaeda openly boasts of using drug tunnels to smuggle weapons of mass destruction through our porous defenses.” Although Huckabee conceded that “[f]ortunately, those boasts have proven empty — at least so far” he still concluded that DHS has “failed miserably” to secure the border. The U.S. Mexico Border Mayors Association echoed Napolitano’s remarks in their response. Politico reports:

In a letter obtained by POLITICO, the mayors from cities in Arizona, Texas and California — saying they represent 7 million people — responded sharply to a recent op-ed Huckabee wrote in the New York Post. [...]

“(C)laims that our border cities are out of control are just not true,” reads the letter from eight mayors addressed to Huckabee and the Post. “Not only do these claims fly in the face of statistical evidence, but they also disparage the tremendous efforts that our law enforcement agencies have made to protect this border and the people who live in border communities.”

They added, “We can tell you first hand that the Southwest Border Initiative is certainly working. We have seen unprecedented investment in terms of manpower, resources, and technology that has resulted in a more secure border. We have implemented a successful strategy which includes greater collaboration with federal, state, local and tribal, and Mexican partners while facilitating legal trade and travel.”

The mayors also added that they “constantly have to correct the false perceptions that our cities are not a safe place to live, work and play.” In fact, according to FBI statistics, they are amongst the safest. The top four big cities in America with the lowest rates of violent crime are San Diego, Phoenix, El Paso and Austin — all of which happen to be pretty close to the U.S. – Mexico border. Counties along the southwest border have some of the lowest rates of violent crime per capita in the nation and those rates have dropped by more than 30 percent since the 1990s while immigration has soared.

Nonetheless, it doesn’t appear the public officials Napolitano and the border city mayors were referring to are paying much attention to the data. Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu — an ardent SB-1070 supporter — accused Napolitano of downplaying border-related violence and of being “divorced from reality.” He also announced that he expects armed conflict with the Mexican drug cartels soon. Meanwhile, a recent report by the Government Accountability Office suggests that it’s the northern border that actually poses a much larger terror risk.