Mexican kidnappers are now bringing their hostages to Phoenix. So says John Kyl:
KYL: Phoenix is the — it is a very large source of kidnapping. It’s called the kidnapping capital of the United States because the illegal immigrants who are brought to Phoenix for distribution throughout the country are held in drop houses, and they are mistreated, horribly treated. They are held for ransom for their families back in Mexico or in El Salvador, or wherever to send more money or they won’t be released and so on. So there’s a great deal of violence and crime associated with the presence of illegal immigrants.
So let’s get this straight: drug cartels, which have immense power within Mexico and El Salvador and relatively little in the United States, are now moving their hostages to Phoenix to hold them because…why, the cheap rental market?
Maybe he’s thinking of elderly people being held against their will in nursing homes.
Punchy
But what’s Sully’s take on this?
Props for the pseudo-Public Enemy ref in the title….
dmsilev
Could be worse. We could be hearing from Tom Tancredo about the desirability of Boulder for similar activities.
dms
SpotWeld
Already fack-checked a debunked
Mojotron
and that kidnapper’s name was….
Joe Arpaio.
Now you know the rest of the story……
-(Rand) Paul Harvey
scav
If it’s not the cheap rentals, is it just that AZ cops are less scary than the alternatives? Why does the author hate our men in blue?
debunking’s a given, dahling. Mere truth has been proven time and time again to only slow a meme down so has been definitively abandoned. This is a post-truthiness world.
The Bearded Blogger
Maybe Kyl and McCain should drum up fear of the Chupacabra.
Kryptik
Remember, you must all be afraid of the dirty brown folks invading our southern borders! They think they’re better than us pure American folk and want to take our land! Be afraid, goddammit, be afraid or we’re not America anymore! WOLVERIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINES!
Alex S.
Whenever I read a title like that, I wonder how many references I miss because I just don’t know the song. And about Jon Kyl, well, just walk on by.
Zifnab
We have to deport them for their own safety, see? Perhaps a pogrom against all Phoenix area hotels and motels is an order. We could swarm every rented room in the city with waves of SWAT and National Guard, round up all the scary brown people, herd them into camps, and deport the undesirables by train.
Oh, wait… I feel a Godwin coming on.
bemused
It doesn’t matter what ludicrous, insane bunk R’s spew. Their base will believe every word and media says it’s not their place to fact check.
David in NY
Does any interviewer know the words, “How do we know that?” or “What’s the evidence for that?”
(I know, I know, simple answers …)
aimai
@Mojotron: FTW.
aimai
Kryptik
@David in NY:
That depends. Is there a ‘(D-*)’ next to the interviewee’s name? No? Then what’s the point, we all know Republicans are sterling bastions of honesty! Not like those goddamned hippies in the Democrat party!
NonyNony
Kyl piles onto the “Don’t come to Arizona for your vacations folks – it’s WAAAAY too scary out here. Also don’t think about retiring here old people – you might get kidnapped for your pension checks!” bandwagon.
I now see how Arizona plans to get out of the financial hole that decades of tax cuts without balancing their budget has gotten them to – they’re going to scare everyone into leaving the state. They’ve already gotten the Americans of Hispanic descent to think about moving out, now they’re onto terrorizing the old people into leaving and keeping new retirees from coming to the state.
Who’s next on the hit list? Young people? I imagine that with the jobs drying up as its economy has collapsed Arizona won’t have to come up with a plan to push the young people out of the state – they’ll do that all on their own…
David in NY
@Alex S.:
“how many references I miss because I just don’t know the song”
Don’t know the song? Well, you certainly weren’t alive in 1967, when it played every 5 minutes on the radio. Wiki says “It has become a pop standard, and is reportedly one of the most covered songs in history, with thousands of different versions recorded. [unverified?] Covers include those by Ray Price, Reba McEntire, Dean Martin, Wanda Jackson, Jack Jones, Georgie Fame, Isaac Hayes, Marty Wilde, Solomon Burke, Burl Ives, Denny Mclain, Vic Damone and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.”
Anyway, don’t fret — as near as I can tell it has no relevance here, unless the kidnappers all tote their hostages to Phoenix because they’re leaving their women behind.
MattF
It’s the golf courses. Severe lack of golf in Mexico and El Salvador, and the drug barons all just got new putters that they need to try out.
BC
I think this is akin to the “we fight them over there so we won’t have to fight them here” scaremongering going on. The Arizona Republicans tell us how dangerous it is to be in Arizona right now, what with the crime wave from the illegal immigrants (stupid for a state that depends on tourism for a big part of their GDP). The FBI rebuts with the crime statistics showing crime is down in Arizona. But the Republican politicians blithely repeat the mantra that the crime is so high in Arizona now. Reminds me of “debates” in House or Senate, where the Republicans have a line that everyone repeats, no matter how many times it is debunked. If we had a vigorous news media, they would be outed for the lies and dissembling they do, but our news media is frightened to cross them.
beltane
What is amazing to me is that these are the exact, as in almost word for word, arguments made against Italian immigration 100 years ago. Next, they will start complaining about anarchists in the Latino community.
Nativists are all the same, unchanging from generation to generation. It is only the objects of their paranoia that change.
Slocum
Bad things like Kyl describes do happen to illegal immigrants. But the solution isn’t really what he thinks it is.
David in NY
Wait. “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” was covered by Denny Mclain???? Makes one question Wikipedia’s reliability.
danimal
How many years before the war machine gins up an invasion of Mexico?
Alex S.
@David in NY:
Hey, I got this one! Read my previous post for the evidence.
Brien Jackson
I don’t know how people who believe this manage to breathe.
Ash Can
@David in NY: Wait a second; that’s ringing a bell. It seems to me he played the organ (yeah, yeah, insert jokes here) and cut an album at the height of his fame. (Too pressed for time at the moment to look it up and confirm.)
fourmorewars
I’m not getting this. How does one read the excerpt and get ‘drug cartels’? Isn’t Kyl, however disingenuous his motives, talking about something that actually happens? Not something cartels do, at least directly, but what a lot of coyotes do? They don’t ‘kidnap,’ that’s a stupid way of phrasing it, but they do entice people north, and then often hold them essentially hostage until they squeeze enough money/labor out of them.
People have been discovered in virtual slavery here, e.g. a well-publicized case several years ago in L.A. involving Asian immigrants doing clothing piecework from a house they weren’t allowed out of ’til somebody escaped.
The paragraph excerpted seems to me hardly less obtuse than the one immediately below it.
burnspbesq
@David in NY:
Yup. McLain actually recorded two albums, according the that very same Wikipedia.
The Moar You Know
@fourmorewars: Thank you. We find this in San Diego every now and then as well.
It’s not like it doesn’t happen – but it sure doesn’t happen the way Kyl is telling it, and the bad actors are not MS-13 or any of the “drug cartels”, just some coyotes (a fair number of whom are whiter than I am) looking to squeeze a few more bucks out of people who don’t have it in the first place.
Bill Murray
@burnspbesq: The Denny McLain Quartet appeared on Ed Sullivan with Bob Gibson on Guitar
Denny doing The Girl from Ipanema
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uyd_VsWiNo&feature=PlayList&p=9C512644B6B712C4&index=2
Svensker
If you read Spotweld’s link at #3 you’ll see that the Phoenix police say that the vast majority of the kidnappings there are tied to either the drug cartels or people involved in the illegal immigrant trade. So, in some ways Kyl is right — the kidnappings have to do with south of the border issue. However, according to the article no way is Phoenix #2 in kidnappings.
PTirebiter
@Mojotron: Good humor, ripped from today’s headlines.
Xenocrates
They are not just coming for the cheap hotels; it has to do with abusing “the world’s best system of medical care.” What with Obama dictating that all hospitals must now prioritize for illegal immigrants and drug mules…wasn’t that in the same section as the death panels? Puleeze, they are really starting to become parodies of themselves at this point. But then, Kyl does come from Arizona…I expect nothing less than full-blooded wingnut crazy.
David in NY
@Ash Can: @Bill Murray: @burnspbesq:
All I have to say is that I thought Mickey Lolich was a better pitcher and had the good sense not to play the organ.
But thanks to everyone for the information.
Roger Moore
@NonyNony:
And it would have worked, too, if it weren’t for those meddling bloggers!
Jager
I keep seeing interviews with burly, 250 lb ranchers wearing big cowboy hats who seem to be scared shitless of scrawny Mexican kids who want to work in a car wash in Phoenix.
r€nato
There is indeed a problem of coyotes preying on the migrants they are moving. They indeed are often stuffed into rental homes and sometimes they are ransomed, among other atrocities.
But, you as an ordinary citizen in Phoenix are no more likely to be kidnapped while minding your own business, than you are to be beheaded.
KCinDC
Sadly, judging by what I heard from him on NPR last week, Terry Goddard, the Democrat running for AZ governor, is pushing the same themes.
But how did anchor babies get left out of Kyl’s story?
Jager
@r€nato:
Not according to Sheriff Joe!
suzanne
@r€nato: Aye, human trafficking is a very real horror.
Which is why it should be free and legal to come here. When there’s no legitimate market, a black market grows in its place. Can’t believe we seem to keep forgetting this.
cckids
@David in NY: Apparently not, though it would save SO much screaming at the TV.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
Phoenix is called the kidnapping capital because a bunch of lying motherfuckers like Kyl made it up.
I haven’t seen any statistics to bear out this goofy claim, and I have been looking for them.
According to Media Matters about a month ago:
PolitiFact: “Experts advise that such rankings can’t be made based on available information,” “no evidence” claim is accurate. PolitiFact.com assessed the claim that “Phoenix is the second kidnapping capital in the world” and determined it is “false.” In a June 27 analysis of the claim, PolitiFact concluded:
Phoenix has experienced hundreds of kidnappings over the past few years. However, we couldn’t find reliable around-the-planet evidence to confirm that only Mexico City experiences more of them. In fact, experts advise that such rankings can’t be made based on available information. If they could, they speculate, other cities would prove to have more kidnappings than Arizona’s capital.
We found nothing confirming Phoenix as No. 2 in kidnappings worldwide.
Roger Moore
@suzanne:
Yup. And along with that black market, we get criminal violence, which creates a need for sweeping new police power and things for ordinary citizens to be afraid of. Of course, Authoritarian politicians are more than happy to take advantage of both of those things. They sure as hell haven’t forgotten what comes from black markets. It’s just that they like those outcomes and want to exploit them, rather than hating them and wanting to do away with them like rational people.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@BC:
It’s a marketing scam for Republicans.
Joe Arpaio marketed his services for years by saying that he had reduced crime and was keeping Phoenix safe.
Now he markets the same services by saying that crime is out of control and it’s dangerous to be in Phoenix without Joe to protect you.
He’s a good marketer, he knows how to manipulate his base.
donquijoterocket
@The Bearded Blogger:
Hell I thought Kyl and Mcinane WERE the chupacabra.
I’m surprised no one from lower wingnutistan has yet turned this into how the mainstream media is ignoring such a big sensational story as the epidemic of kidnappings and beheadings in the streets of Phoenix.I just hope I’ve not given them an idea.
Pangloss
Maybe they should have set CSI in Phoenix, what with all the beheaddings and the rivers of blood choking the gutters.
Sad_Dem
I don’t know about Kyl’s sources or motivation, and I’ve never been held for ransom in a safe house, but I have heard from more than one source on how this works, and I’ve read about busts in newspapers. Here’s how it goes: The gangs have the lion’s share of the Mexico-to-U.S. human trafficking market. If you want to come here, you pay a coyote (likely a gang member) to guide you across the border. That coyote may or may not deliver services as paid for.
You can end up being kidnapped, once you are on the U.S. side, and held for ransom. The kidnappers take you to a safe (for them) house and call your relative(s) in the U.S. and demand money for your safe release. No money, you get beat or worse, and held until you can pay. If you can’t pay, I dunno, they toss you on the street somewhere with the clothes on your back. I think this happens.
http://www.elsalvador.org/Embajadas/eeuu/Prensa2.nsf/7e439667d62c191a8525698d006fafcd/dc1462a32ca9c5eb85256ebb00772759?OpenDocument
patrick II
@David in NY: You can still buy Denny McClain at the Organ for $10, including the hit tune “By the Time I get to Phoenix”.
anonimouse
Yeah. It doesn’t help when National Geographic runs specials on “Drugs” and using that statistic.
I wish I knew how people in Arizona felt about this as what they are doing is trying to do is start a national freak out over illegal immigration. Outside of Arizona, this freak out should be questioned, but the national media is too enamored with Sherriff Joe’s pink underwear to ever ask him a lot of serious questions. They just take his side when he says the government stopped his little ICE program over civil rights abuses and never stop to ask if those abuses were true.
I mean, when he had his ICE dollars and was cooperating, I read he had over 100 police involved in this effort and that it netted over 1,000 departations. But that was over several years. It was like each policeman found 2 illegal immigrants a year in a state where one in ten people is supposedly an illegal immigrant. He would then claim that he had run them all out of the county. I am wondering if they actually were ever even there or, if that is the case, if Joe actually was really looking very hard. (was he just using the funds and sitting on his keister?) His M/O is using his office to make false arrests against public figures that end up going nowhere in court. Most the reporters though, love his pink underwear. It’s popular with people, too.
Isn’t it odd, for instance, that the civil rights groups continued to protest AFTER they had supposedly won in court? Is there some reason why this man shouldn’t be trusted to enforce a law that allows his police broad protection from abuse of warrentless searches and seizures?
Sorry for the long rant, but sitting here in New York, I get frustrated with the whole “Obama, why don’t you enforce the law” crap that doesn’t have anything to do with what the heck is going on in Arizona.
Bill Murray
@David in NY: Mickey also managed to not get busted under the RICO act with purported mob bosses like John Gotti, Jr. Different strokes for different folks I guess
mclaren
You guys need to read SpotWeld’s link a little further.
Bogota? Bogota COLOMBIA? One of the most violent cities in the world, where judges get kidnapped and senators get kneecapped by motorcycle-riding assassins every week?
Folks, if they’re naming these kinds of war-zone cities like San Salvafar and Botota as “higher kidnapping rates than Phoenix,” that’s bad. That’s real bad.
Phoenix has a serious problem with foreign kidnapping. Saying that a Mad Max war zone like Bogota is worse doesn’t help.
Norwegian Shooter
@Punchy:
Are you sure DJ is a PE fan?
Norwegian Shooter
From a New Yorker article:
“According to F.B.I. statistics, the four safest big cities in the United States—San Diego, Phoenix, El Paso, and Austin—are all in border states. “
Cacti
I can answer that for you.
It feels like I stepped into a time warp and emerged in Alabama circa 1960.
The only thing that’s missing is bombs going off in Hispanic churches, and frankly, I think that may be just a matter of time.
Jan Brewer is a less intelligent, less articulate George Wallace, and Joe Arpaio is the Bull Connor of this generation.
anonimouse
@Cacti: Thank you. It is also really starting to bother me that quite a people I know think that this who freak out of the “whites” about the “browns” is funny because those whites are crazy. You know, if I were Hispanic, I probably wouldn’t find it so funny. I also wouldn’t find people who found it funny to be very trustworthy either.
henqiguai
@Punchy (#1):
Really ? I recall Issac Hayes doing a kick-ass R&B cover (somewhere back in the ’70s) of the earlier and I believe original Glen Campbell By the Time I Get to Phoenix. But then, maybe Public Enemy also did a cover.