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Arizona Republicans produced legislation last week that would legalize shooting and killing trespassers on private land. Essentially, they took an existing law that allows someone to shoot a home invader and extended it outside to the property line — even if the property extends for hundreds of acres.
The bill, which passed the House and moved to the Arizona Senate, makes no specific mention of migrants. But everyone knows what the legislation is really about. A Feb. 27 headline in Axios got right to the point: “Arizona GOP advances bill legalizing killing undocumented migrants on suspicion of trespassing.”
If you want to see how the law would work in practice, you can look to rural New York, where a carload of young people looking for a friend’s house pulled into the wrong driveway last year. One of them didn’t make it out alive. The owner of the property, Kevin Monahan, addled by fear, shot 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis dead. Monahan testified that he had felt “under siege” by the appearance of cars and a motorcycle at the end of his driveway. Two shotgun blasts, one fatal, were his response.
For Arizona Republicans, Monahan seems to have had cause to kill — especially if the victims belong to a disfavored class. An Arizona rancher is awaiting trial for shooting at a group of unarmed migrants who were crossing his 170-acre ranch. One of the migrants was killed. Apparently, Republican lawmakers there want to encourage more such shootings.
The primary source, and cheerleader, of this aggression masquerading as law isn’t hard to identify. He was campaigning at the Texas border this week.
Former President Donald Trump lies constantly, but he seems to relish lying about immigrants. “Now, the United States is being overrun by the Biden migrant crime,” Trump said Thursday in Texas, where he pursued a double-barreled agenda of generating hatred of migrants and of President Joe Biden. “It’s a new form of vicious violation to our country.”
That’s right, a nation founded by immigrants, where descendants of the original natives currently represent less than 2% of the population, is right now experiencing a “new form” of “migrant crime.” In reality, there continues to be no surge in crime linked to migrants, just as there was no surge when Trump, seeking political gain, highlighted crimes committed by migrants in the past. Violent crime in the U.S. spiked in 2020, Trump’s final year in office, and remained high in 2021. It has declined since. An NBC News investigation found that crime is also down in cities that are receiving high numbers of migrants transported from Texas.
Sometimes Trump utters ahistorical nonsense because he is an ignorant man with no grasp of history. But his comments about migrants are always dishonest with purpose.
Arizona legislators essentially have taken Trump’s crayon scrawl — INVASION — and repackaged it as legislation. It’s part of a campaign to justify previously unjustifiable violence outside the home. Like Stand Your Ground laws, the Arizona legislation would enable a shooter to claim that any killing was a response to fear. The dead party would, of course, be unable to dispute the claim.
Violence, like anti-migrant hysteria, is central to the white nationalist cause, which views migration as “invasion” and brown-skinned migrants as targets for lethal force. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott treats migrants — including children — as an invading army.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, will almost certainly veto the Arizona shooting-gallery legislation if it reaches her desk. But the rage, fear and aggression that inspired it will persist. Too many people enjoy it, and profit by it, for it to stop now.
Francis Wilkinson is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.
