How America turned this Arizona border town into a police state

I visited an Arizona border town. Here's what they really think about aggressive immigration enforcement.

Jim Chilton walks beside a border fence on his ranch in Arivaca, Arizona.
(Image credit: FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images)

In the federal government's rush to protect America's border, it is ruining the lives of many Americans who call the border home.

A few weeks ago, I visited Arivaca, Arizona, a breathtakingly beautiful unincorporated hamlet of 700 people about 11 miles from the Mexican border. No one I spoke to in Arivaca wants an uncontrolled border that terrorists or criminals could mosey on through, no questions asked. But they also believe the path of ever more aggressive immigration enforcement that we are on is seriously messed up. Even the current level of enforcement, they say, makes their town, and many like theirs, feel like occupied territories where law-abiding U.S. citizens are treated like criminals and enemies.

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Shikha Dalmia

Shikha Dalmia is a visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University studying the rise of populist authoritarianism.  She is a Bloomberg View contributor and a columnist at the Washington Examiner, and she also writes regularly for The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. She considers herself to be a progressive libertarian and an agnostic with Buddhist longings and a Sufi soul.