They wear giant slippers with carpet soles.
It is the standard item for immigrants making an illegal passage across the US border Arizona – the coarse, snug-fitting shoes with carpeted soles that show no traces in the desert sand.
And we’ve seen them everywhere – discarded with camouflage jackets and pants, worn to blend in with the landscape and offer hiding places to border patrols.
The special shoes with carpet on the soles to avoid detection
A discharged “cammo” sighting is distinctive evidence of another who escaped.
It doesn’t work every time.
We joined a twilight patrol with a deputy sheriff in Cochise County, where Mexico meets Arizona. It was a late shift at the border, poised on Highway 92 – until the handbrake turn which meant a sighting.
Roadside cameras had detected motion on a stretch of highway, well used as a rallying point. People making illegal crossings are directed here by the signs that pay for the passage.
These criminal gangs recruit drivers in the United States through social media, often teenagers. They are paid a fee, typically $ 2,000 each, to pick up the immigrants and take them north.
The search of our deputy took him into the roadside bush, under the drains and through the weeds, until his flashlight illuminated three people, a man and two women in camouflage suits and papered shoes, who are hiding silently in the dark undergrowth.
Crisis levels of illicit exports
They were a sad sight: tired, dejected, and eagerly clinging to the water provided by the border officials who let them into the back of their pickup.
The smuggling infrastructure that facilitates human trafficking across the Mexican border is also being exploited to transport drugs, in crisis quantities.
Illicit export to the United States is fueling crisis levels in the use of the drug fentanyl, in particular.
No wonder border security, as a mid-term electoral issue, tops the list for many in Arizona.
Sheriff Mark Dannels
“We spend a lot of our time chasing the challenges of the border,” said Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels.
“They’re running through people’s properties, breaking in, car chases at 100mph every day in this county.”
“In 2021, Arizona led the nation: over five million pills were seized here in southern Arizona.
“Our problem is that our president, our leadership in Congress, has to change the message – he has to get politics out of it and he has to have action behind it.
“We can’t get our president, or the Congressional leadership, to admit there’s a problem out here.
“It is frustrating to me that the federal government says we have no problems. It is a huge challenge and it is insulting.”
The crowd sang “another four years” at a recent rally held by former US President Donald Trump
Border security plays a part in electoral priorities in Arizona.
It is at the center of the debate along with economics, abortion and crime – important topics and yet, for many, subtitles in these midterm.
In this voting process, the power of the vote itself is the issue that has characterized the campaign.
The Democrats’ warning, from the president down, is about democracy threatened by electoral denial embedded in the electoral process.
Read more: Anger, betrayal and fear as America prepares for mid-term elections
The Republican Party lines up more than 300 candidates, for various positions of power, who believe the 2020 elections have been stolen Donald Trump.
Among these stands out Kari Lake, who is in office for the office of governor in Arizona.
It has star quality, no doubt.
Loyalist Trump is a polished former TV host who slips through the campaign on an “Ask Me Anything” tour.
Not that anyone is asking for election fraud.
There is a reason for this: no one doubts it in the court of Kari, a Trump loyalist.
Republican candidate for governor of Arizona Kari Lake hugs Trump
We attended his event at the Fire House in Peoria, Arizona, along with Japanese and French TV crews, present to witness a growing phenomenon in US politics.
This electoral denial girl is touted as a potential running mate for Trump should she run for president in 2024.
I spoke to several members of the public, and they were as polite as they were strident in claiming that “the media” was responsible for an election fraud that cost Trump the presidency.
In an awkward, but somewhat matey interaction, the crowd was encouraged by Ms. Lake to spin around in their chairs and greet the “fake news” that were spinning from the back of the room.
For them, the cheery claim of election denial is as routine as it is casual, in a Republican Party feeling Donald Trump’s gravitational pull.
Doubting the integrity of an election process has long since evolved from a fringe concept to a traditional and widely held belief – never mind, there is no evidence to suggest election fraud of any material significance.
If Ms. Lake becomes governor of Arizona and polls indicate she has every chance, it will be her job to certify the state count in the 2024 presidential election.
This is a Trump loyalist claiming he was robbed in 2020; he will not fully support the integrity of the midterm elections in which he stands.
I asked her: “The only election you will support, the one you win?”
His response was: “I will absolutely accept the results of a fair, honest and transparent election.”
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How do mid-term elections work?
It is a direct answer that few would disagree with. He is also one who leaves the door open to denying the integrity of the electoral process.
Who will be surprised if this does not happen?
This is Arizona, which has seen challenges, audits, and lawsuits that led nowhere after the 2020 election.
It was a pantomime protest that saw this state dubbed “ground zero” for the rejection of the elections – that may have just been the raising of the curtain.
