Border States Boast Low Crime

The reasoning behind Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s controversial immigration bill was simple: illegal immigrants make border states dangerous, so Arizona must crack down on illegal immigrants. The biggest problem, however, is that border states are some of the safest in the country. According to the FBI, the four lowest rates for violent crime in cities of at least 500,000 inhabitants are all in border states: San Diego, Phoenix, El Paso, and Austin. "The border is safer now than it's ever been," a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman said. For instance, El Paso, which is directly across the border from one of the world’s most violent cities in Ciudad Juarez, had just one murder last year. Law enforcement officials explain that by saying that the bloody turf wars of Mexico’s cartels stay in Mexico. El Paso County’s sheriff said, "the Mexican cartels know that if they try to commit that kind of violence here, they'll get shut down."