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Arizona Law Derails Conference of Governors of U.S. and -Mexico Border States
Loading ...For nearly 30 years, the governors of the states that line both sides of the United States-Mexico border have gathered to celebrate border bonhomie. They issue proclamations and pledges to work together, air grievances and concerns behind closed doors and pose for the cameras in symbolic showings of cooperation.
But this year the 28th annual conference has collided headlong with Arizona’s crackdown on illegal immigration, inspiring bitter recriminations among Mexican governors and rancor among some American ones.
Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona has championed the new state law that gives local police officers broader authority to question people they stop about their immigration status. On Tuesday, the United States Justice Department filed suit to challenge the law.
Ms. Brewer happens by rotation to be the chairwoman and host of this year’s conference, scheduled for September at a resort in Phoenix. But after all six Mexican border governors wrote to her to say they intended to boycott the gathering to protest the new law, Ms. Brewer sent a letter of her own last week to the governors on both sides of the border saying she was canceling the whole conference.
Continue reading at New York Times
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