Fish and Wildlife looks to update statuses in 4 states

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Thursday it is soliciting information to update the status of 23 endangered or threatened species in Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.

Spokesman Jeff Humphrey said the Endangered Species Act requires a review of listed plant and animal species every five years to see whether the classifications are still accurate or whether additional action, including full-fledged status reviews, are needed.

A new batch of species is reviewed every year.

State wildlife agency or university scientists usually provide the information, but the general public frequently contributes too, said Humphrey, who is based in Phoenix.

Information must be submitted by May 12.

“Sometimes what we get from the public is their awareness of increased threat,” he said. For example, if a county has slated a highway to go through a certain area, that might affect an animal’s migratory route.

Fish and Wildlife staffers who track various endangered or threatened species might not automatically know of potential threats from such projects, he added.

“Particularly in the area of threats, sometimes citizens have provided us good heads-up,” Humphrey said.

In addition, he said there is an increasing emphasis on citizen science – such as bird counts and surveys conducted by private citizens keyed to shifts in the behavior, migration or habitat patterns of animals and plants.

Such efforts, he said, “are becoming more and more relevant to us as we look at more long-term pictures of species,” Humphrey said.

He cited work being done by the USA National Phenology Network involving federal agencies, academic institutions and citizen scientists. The University of Arizona-based project studies changes in plant and animal life cycle events influenced by climate change.

Humphrey said the review itself won’t result in a change of status for any listed species but could trigger a full-blown review of the listing, for instance to evaluate the recovery plan being used.

Among the protected species under review this year are the Gila chub (a fish), masked bobwhite quail, Mexican long-nosed bat and the Texas poppy-mallow, a wildflower.

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On the Web

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service:

www.fws.gov

Federal Register notice:

www.fws.gov/policy/library/E9-2885.pdf.

Key Arizona legislators identified possible budget cut options Thursday that could approach approximately $390 million for the statewide university system.

A figure of that magnitude would be double the $191.5 million in cuts recently instituted for Arizona State University, the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona by the Legislature for the current fiscal year.

Those reductions, from a total of $1.13 billion appropriated for the universities, helped eliminate the state’s $1.6 billion budget shortfall brought on by the crumbling economy.

The universities also get money from tuition and federal grants. State Board of Regents President Fred Boice told legislators at a hearing in Phoenix that possible new cuts would “cause severe damage.”

Boice told legislators that regents and the universities’ administrators recognize that there are more cuts coming “that are severe and will have to be severe.”

But he said that 85 percent of the universities’ budgets go toward employee costs, so while any cuts implemented will hurt employees, “of course our students will suffer” too, because layoffs will translate to fewer and larger classes and mean lengthening the time it takes many students to graduate.

“What we have to be very careful of at the University of Arizona is that we do not in a very short period of time destroy … a great research university,” President Robert Shelton said.

Research programs at the university drew $530 million in federal and other grants during the current year, but Shelton said that figure probably will be reduced some next year.

“If the U of A doesn’t succeed in competing for federal research dollars with Cal Tech, Johns Hopkins and MIT, I can assure you that those funds will go elsewhere,” he said.

Shelton also said the university remains committed to a biomedical campus in Phoenix. But he cautioned, “If we make any further cuts, we might as well start closing up that shop or drop back to a maintenance level.”

ASU President Michael Crow said his university’s mission as a comprehensive metropolitan research university is to make it institution accessible to the general population.

“We will remain committed to this mission come-what-may, no matter what,” Crow said. “It is our mission” — regardless of the level of investment that the Legislature makes.

But Crow added that the cuts ASU instituted for the current fiscal year reduced the level of state-invested dollars-per-student back to what the school received in 1998.

With more substantive cuts next year, he said, “We will begin to move to a point where we can’t just reorganize and focus our talent. We will have to repurpose the institution.”

Crow also said that the ASU West campus is being refashioned as a new, medium-sized undergraduate-only four-year college, designed to operate at lower cost and possibly as a future model.

As a state, Crow said Arizona is underproducing college graduates by half to reach what is the national average.

Rep. Rich Crandall, R-Mesa, said cuts of the size mentioned in the chairmen’s options would be, according to Crow, devastating and catastrophic to the system.

But Crandall also said the options listed aren’t all the ones that will be available to the Legislature. The situation could be changed significantly depending upon the federal stimulus package that Congress ultimately approves, he said.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills. “I hope we don’t dwell too long on this math. If the cuts are deep it will be devastating. If the cuts aren’t too deep, it won’t be devastating. I don’t think we’re in Doomsday based on what has happened so far in ’09.”

NAU President John Haeger said his university’s core mission, and continued goal, is to remain focused on undergraduate education. But he said that continued severe cuts — potentially of more than $20 million in the next fiscal year — would jeopardize that mission.

Arizona State University announced an unspecified, first-ever enrollment cap Tuesday and plans to close about four dozen academic programs because of $88 million in state-imposed budget reductions.

ASU spokeswoman Sharon Keeler said Tuesday no specific enrollment ceiling was announced immediately, but closures will start at once.

Imposition of an enrollment cap is a dramatic departure for the university, which since 2002 has actively increased its enrollment. Current enrollment is expected to top last spring’s 59,871 students on all ASU campuses.

“For the past seven years ASU has expanded its enrollment, added new academic programs and enhanced quality and productivity at every level to serve the people of Arizona better,” President Michael Crow said in a release.

“Making cuts of this sort now is extremely painful to all of us at ASU but we have no choice.”

New, unspecified staff and clinical faculty layoffs will be included above recent previous reductions. The earlier cuts eliminated more than 550 staff positions and more than 200 faculty associates and instituted mandatory 10- to 15-day furloughs for all employees.

Most of the affected programs announced Tuesday are on the Tempe campus, but administrative programs on the Polytechnic and ASU West campuses will be scaled down.

Students in programs that are to close will be able to complete their degrees, Keeler said.

The application deadline for next semester’s freshman class will end March 1, five months early.

The $88 million reduction that the Legislature enacted represented 18 percent of the $480.2 million fiscal 2009 state appropriation for ASU.

Last month, Gov. Jan Brewer signed legislation ordering a $141.5 million reduction for the statewide university system. That comes on top of an earlier $50 million cut imposed on the three state schools.

The University of Arizona has announced elimination of some 600 jobs, elimination of many outreach and community-based activities, five-day furloughs for all faculty and staff starting July 1, merging or consolidating academic and administrative units and trimming its academic colleges from 16 to 13. The application deadline at UA is May 1.

Northern Arizona University, meanwhile, has announced closure of its Social Research Center public-opinion research laboratory and its Center for High Altitude Training on top of keeping more than 100 positions unfilled.

Keeler said some ASU programs will be “disestablished,” meaning the major will continue to be offered under another administrative structure. Others will be closed – eliminated entirely – she said.

Programs will be closed in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Herberger College of the Arts, Mary Lou Fulton College of Education, College of Teacher Education and Leadership, the College of Technology & Innovation and the Morrison School of Management and Agribusiness.

Increased enrollments at Arizona’s state universities are exacerbating the task of administrators trying to stretch budgets drastically trimmed because of the worst recession in decades.

All three universities had record-high enrollments in the fall term. Northern Arizona University repeated that in the spring semester and the University of Arizona and Arizona State University are expected to also set records when official tallies are completed for the spring, officials said.

All three are also making major cuts, resulting in some larger classes and layoffs. Late last month, the Legislature approved $141.5 million in university cuts as part of a midyear budget fix designed to close a $1.6 billion state budget shortfall.

In all, the Legislature has now slashed $191.5 million of a total $1.13 billion it appropriated for all three universities in the 2008-09 fiscal year.

“We can’t get better and we can’t fulfill our fiduciary responsibility (to educate all qualified Arizona high school graduates) if we’re starved of state support,” Arizona Board of Regents President Fred Boice said Wednesday.

ASU officials announced $88 million in spending cuts this week and said the budget deficit fix forced it to impose a first-ever unspecified enrollment cap and close about 48 academic programs. President Michael Crow also ordered scaled-back operations on two campuses and a March deadline for new applicants.

Ashley Hyne, a UA sophomore from Chicago, said the budget woes are having a big impact.

“Getting classes has been difficult,” she said. “Class availability is going to go down, there will be more large classes.” She fears not getting into courses she’ll need to graduate in four years, yet can’t afford to stay longer.

Still, Arizona’s cost was far less than a comparable education closer to home, Hyne said. “I didn’t even apply in the Midwest because the schools were so expensive.”

UA officials estimate 35,500 to 35,600 students are enrolled now versus 34,737 a year ago. Official numbers won’t be available for a few more days at Arizona or at ASU, which had 59,871 students at all its campuses last spring, nearly 1,100 above spring 2007. NAU’s total spring enrollment, 21,413, is 5.9 percent higher than last spring’s 20,224.

Fall enrollments are always larger than those in the spring, officials say.

“We’re doing everything we can,” said Rick Kroc, UA’s associate vice provost for institutional research and planning, “We have budgeted to meet the spring demand as best we can.”

UA’s cuts include about 600 jobs, many outreach and community-based activities and reducing its academic colleges from 16 to 13. Class sizes have increased, more adjunct professors are being used and faculty is being asked to teach more, Kroc said.

NAU has left more than 100 positions unfilled and is using more nontenure-track professors. Yet its spring enrollment increased about 9 percent, with nonresidents up more than 10 percent from a year ago — more than double the increase among in-state students.

“The tuition is still considered a bargain,” said NAU spokeswoman Lisa Nelson. That and NAU’s pledge to keep rates the same from the time freshmen start help explain why the university is attractive to out-of-state students, she added.

Freshmen Arizona residents enrolled at NAU pay tuition and fees of $2,725 this semester, while nonresident rates are $8,274 for first-semester freshmen. ASU and UA rates are slightly higher.

UA is seeing a modest reduction in out-of-state applications and admissions, but budget problems in California “could mean that we’ll have a strong yield of California students,” Kroc said.

Tommy Bruce, president of the Associated Students of the University of Arizona, said limiting enrollment would undercut the universities’ responsibility to educate Arizona’s students.

But they are public institutions “barely supported by the Legislature,” whose members have “spoken very loudly that it’s not of value to them,” Bruce said.

Boice, the Regents president, said there are few options remaining for the universities if cuts continue.

“With the ever-increasing student body and with declining state support, we are restricted in the numbers of quality faculty that we can provide to those students,” Boice said. “We will therefore at some point either have to restrict enrollment in order to maintain quality of the educational process or we will be forced to reduce the quality of that product.”

Oracle State Park assistant manager Tina Acosta fears that "the preservation, conservation, educational and cultural heritage are not being taken into consideration" by budget cutters.<a href="http://10.4.149.24/archives/apphoto/search/?search%5Bform%5D%5Bfulltext%5D=John+Miller+within+BYLINE"/>

ORACLE — To many people living in southeastern Pinal County, the Oracle State Park is a hidden environmental gem that draws the local rural communities together.

So concern over its possible closure as part of the state’s attempt to cut a $1.6 billion budget deficit has rippled like a shockwave through Oracle, an unincorporated community 45 miles northeast of Tucson, and the surrounding area.

“Oracle is not incorporated; we’re not a town, we’re not a city,” said area resident Julie Szekely. “We have no legal entity to provide things like a place for people to get together and do things as a community… We use Oracle State Park as our neighborhood gathering place.”

The 4,000-acre park was among eight of Arizona’s 27 state parks that officials initially recommended for closure, for a five-month savings of $844,840, because of midyear spending cuts imposed by legislation that Gov. Jan Brewer signed last weekend.

Action on the recommended closures has been tabled temporarily as Arizona Parks Board members examine other alternatives, but 47 state parks seasonal employees were put on leave without pay Friday.

The eight parks recommended for closure had relatively low visitation rates. Officially, the Oracle park only reported 9,989 visitors during 2007-08.

But the front entrance gate is unmanned, with only an honor system for visitors to pay $6 per vehicle without annual passes.

The count likely doesn’t reflect the true number of visitors, more repeat visits by pass-holders and the park’s 125 to 150 volunteers, said Tina Acosta, the park’s assistant manager.

Padlocking its gate would trim $116,000 from the park’s budget through June 30.

Acosta said she fears that “the preservation, conservation, educational and cultural heritage are not being taken into consideration” by bean-counters.

“I think a lot of the more rural parks are very connected to the communities,” she said. “The people are more connected to the parks.”

Frank Palazzolo, chef and owner of Nonna Maria’s, an Italian restaurant in Oracle, said the park attracts people from San Manuel and Mammoth, and even close to Tucson, and his business would suffer.

“This would be a major loss of business for the community, not just me,” Palazzolo said, adding that losing the park would give people who hike, cycle or come up for concerts or other special events less reason to drive to Oracle.

A four-mile section of the Arizona Trail, which stretches from Mexico to Utah, weaves through the park.

Its centerpiece is the historic Kannally Ranch House, a white Mediterranean-revival style structure with brick patios and multi-terraces that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Built by the pioneering family that owned what was a 50,000-acre cattle ranch, it’s used for an annual October pumpkin festival plus concerts, weddings and memorial services.

As an ecological education center, the park draws 2,000 or more schoolchildren annually to learn out on its 15 miles of hiking trails about the outdoors, plants and wildlife and the area’s history.

The educational mission is close to the hearts of many.

“Little kids will come and grab you by the leg and say, `Thank you so much,”‘ said Bill John, past president of the Friends of Oracle State Park.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts speaks at the University of Arizona's law school Wednesday morning.

The late William Rehnquist was one of the two or three most significant Supreme Court chief justices in history, current Chief Justice John Roberts said Wednesday.

In a lecture at the University of Arizona’s law school, Roberts said Rehnquist was responsible for a “seismic shift” away from political science and public policy “to the more solid grounds of legal arguments” in case presentations before the court.

When Rehnquist joined the court in 1972 at age 47, Roberts said, the practice of constitutional law was “more in the realm of political science.”

That could be seen in the broader arguments made in the briefs before the Supreme Court in important constitutional cases, he said.

“Over Justice Rehnquist’s time on the court, the method of analysis and argument shifted to the more solid grounds of legal arguments – what are the tests of the statutes involved, what precedents control.

“Rehnquist, a student both of political science and the law, was significantly responsible for that seismic shift.”

Whether the shift was a good change can be debated, “but I think there’s no disputing that such a shift did occur during the time that Justice Rehnquist was on the court,” Roberts said.

He said when Rehnquist joined the court, a minority of justices had been former federal judges.

“Today, for the first time in its history, every member of the court was a federal court of appeals judge before joining the court – a more legal perspective and less of a policy perspective,” Roberts said.

During Rehnquist’s early years on the court, he often was the lone dissenter – so much so that “his law clerks bought him a Lone Ranger doll that stayed on his mantelpiece ’till the end of his tenure on the court,” Roberts said, long after his lone dissents had become accepted as law by a court majority.

Rehnquist was elevated to chief justice in 1986 and “earned the respect of his colleagues by the fairness and efficiency he displayed,” Roberts said.

He noted Rehnquist’s unconventional ways, from favoring Hush Puppy shoes and long sideburns to missing one presidential State of the Union address because “it conflicted with the watercolor class he was taking at the local YMCA.

“Rehnquist explained that he had paid $25 to sign up for the class and he wasn’t going to miss one of the sessions,” he said.

Roberts said that during Rehnquist’s 33-year tenure on the Supreme Court, he argued 39 cases with him. “Each of those arguments was a lesson, sometimes a hard one, in lawyering,” he said.

He said that as an associate justice, Rehnquist taught advocates the importance of preparation “focused on a rigorous understanding of the content of the controlling law.”

Roberts cited two favorite questions Rehnquist would pose to lawyers:

” ‘You say that’s what Congress meant. What did Congress say?’ ”

And, ” ‘Which of our cases support that proposition?’ ”

Roberts said Rehnquist had a knack for getting to the heart of an issue quickly and efficiently, and was known for the brevity of his opinions and his love of adding historical perspective, frequently referring to little-known events.

He enjoyed wagers and delighted in charades, croquet and board games, Roberts added.

Roberts was named to the high court in September 2005 to succeed Rehnquist. He gave the college’s third annual Rehnquist Center Lecture.

The nonpartisan Rehnquist Center on the Constitutional Structures of Government was established at the college in 2006, and the lecture series honors the late chief justice.

In a question-and-answer session, Roberts said the increasingly politicized nature of the Senate judicial confirmation process is troubling.

“I think we need to have a broader recognition that we are not part of the political process, that we are not representatives of either an administration or a confirming Senate on the court,” he said.

He also said having justices come to the court with trial experience would be a good thing. Most have primarily an academic background, he noted.

“The one gaping hole in the background of legal experience is trial experience, the trial judge,” he said.

He added that Rehnquist was a hands-on trial lawyer for his entire career as a private practitioner and missed that so much that as chief justice he once appointed himself to sit as a trial judge in the Eastern District of Virginia.

Rehnquist rendered an opinion “and was promptly reversed by the 4th Circuit” Court of Appeals, Roberts said.

Rehnquist

Boy was 12 at the time; woman was shot eight times

BISBEE – A 13-year-old Douglas boy was sentenced Friday to at least four years in juvenile corrections custody for shooting his mother to death.

Cochise County Superior Court Judge James Conlogue had found the boy guilty earlier this month.

The judge ruled that prosecutors had proven the boy acted intentionally and with premeditation when he shot his mother, 34-year-old Sara Madrid, eight times on Aug. 1.

Although the judge sentenced the boy Friday to at least four years in custody, his written order said the boy would be committed until age 18.

Conlogue later told Court Clerk James Giacomino that he would issue an order Monday clarifying “conflicting issues” related to the sentencing.

The clerk said he couldn’t comment further.

According to court testimony, the woman left the home briefly, and the boy took a .22-caliber pistol from her closet and waited for her to return, then shot her after they had argued over his chores.

The boy, who was 12 at the time of the shooting, has not been identified because of his juvenile status.

Alfonso Munoz, Madrid’s live-in boyfriend of 10 years, saw the shooting and said the boy gave him the empty gun after the shooting. Munoz, who had raised the boy, said he had taught him how to load and fire the pistol and instructed him to use guns only in an emergency and in self-defense.

Cochise County Deputy Public Defender Sanford Edelman had argued during the Jan. 2 hearing that the boy did not intend to kill her but rather just get back at her for abusing him. The boy had told police his mother yelled at him and sometimes slapped him.

Chief Criminal Deputy County Attorney Doyle Johnstun, who did not prosecute the case, said the county attorney’s office and the boy’s lawyer had presented information to Conlogue to use in deciding the sentence.

Some relatives provided information suggesting that Madrid may have been orally abusive to her son, Johnstun said. At the earlier hearing, the boy’s aunt, Ernestine Huitron, testified that Madrid, her sister, did not want the boy to live with her, had a temper and yelled at him.

Huitron said, “He is a docile, sweet boy. Sara said (the boy) was stupid and dumb.”

On Friday, Dr. Judith Becker, a psychologist called by Edelman, told Conlogue that the boy should be sent to a treatment facility, not the state Department of Juvenile Corrections.

Conlogue found that the boy’s age didn’t relieve him from responsibility.

On Friday, Conlogue’s written “secure care” order said the boy would be placed in 24-hour continuous confinement at a secure facility until age 17.

Because the judge earlier decided to try the boy as a juvenile, the maximum possible sentence under Arizona law would be a juvenile corrections commitment until he turns 18. The boy turned 13 on Sunday.

Juvenile corrections officials will conduct an analysis of his needs prior to any treatment, including psychiatric or psychological therapy, according to Johnstun.

“Obviously, it’s a huge tragedy for the victim and for the boy and the family,” he said.

Johnstun said he was told that the boy had had minimal interaction with his biological father.

Two of former U.S. Rep. Rick Renzi’s co-defendants won’t have to stand trial together because they’re accused of unrelated crimes, a federal magistrate has ruled.

U.S. Magistrate Bernardo Velasco’s ruling found that James Sandlin doesn’t have to stand trial alongside Andrew Beardall.

Sandlin, a real estate investor and a one-time business associate of Renzi’s, whose term as a Republican congressman for Arizona has just ended, is charged with conspiring with Renzi in a land swap deal to benefit both men. Beardall, an attorney who was president and general counsel of an insurance company that Renzi owned, is accused of conspiring with Renzi to commit insurance fraud.

In the ruling issued last week, Velasco found that the insurance fraud counts were not related to the alleged land exchange offenses.

Only Renzi had a relationship to each of the co-defendants in the separate land swap and insurance fraud cases spelled out by government prosecutors. Velasco granted Sandlin’s motion to separate the co-defendants because Sandlin and Beardall weren’t working in concert and there was no indication that the co-defendants knew everything about both alleged conspiracies.

The ruling means the possibility of at least two trials — and potentially three or four — perhaps one for each defendant.

Renzi is named in all but one of 44 counts, on charges including conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering, insurance fraud, extortion and racketeering.

A third co-defendant, Dwayne Lequire, an accountant at Renzi’s insurance company, was added when a superseding indictment was handed up in November.

That indictment will bring new motions and more arguments, including one over whether the racketeering count will enable the government to try multiple defendants.

Renzi, Beardall, Sandlin and Lequire all have pleaded not guilty.

Renzi, 50, initially was indicted last February. The charges came after months of speculation over his future after federal investigators began looking into the circumstances of a federal land swap that also involved the purchase of 480 acres near the San Pedro River in Cochise County owned by Sandlin. Renzi did not seek a fourth term last year.

Besides the land swap allegations, the indictment also alleged that he siphoned off funds from his family insurance firm to fund his first election campaign.

In last week’s ruling, Velasco wrote that it was “disingenuous for the government to argue that all of the offenses in the indictment are connected” through Renzi’s insurance company.

Velasco did not rule on Beardall’s request in the same motion to separate his trial from Renzi’s.

Beardall’s lawyers contended that a joint trial would cause Beardall “extreme prejudice,” unfairly tainting him because of a large volume of evidence concerning the alleged land exchange scheme that Beardall had no involvement with.

Velasco also must examine an attorney-client privilege issue concerning Beardall and Renzi. Beardall has claimed that if the two men were tried together, Renzi could claim an attorney-client relationship that would preclude Beardall from presenting evidence on his own behalf concerning his state of mind in making allegedly false statements.

Separating the two defendants, Velasco’s motion said, would be both appropriate and necessary “to resolve the conflict between Beardall’s right to present a defense and Renzi’s right not to have privileged communications introduced against him at trial.”

Several other issues remain, including whether to dismiss the insurance fraud counts and constitutional challenges Renzi has raised.

Lawyers for Renzi, who represented Arizona’s 1st Congressional District for three terms, argued in December before Velasco that the government’s investigation violated Renzi’s rights under the “speech or debate” clause of the U.S. Constitution granting members of Congress protection for their legislative acts.

Meanwhile, on Monday U.S. District Judge David Bury reset the trial’s start from March 24 to June 2.

Women held in three immigration detention facilities in Arizona receive inadequate treatment, ranging from deficient medical care to being mixed in with people serving criminal sentences, University of Arizona researchers said Tuesday.

The report issued by the Southwest Institute for Research on Women criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency responsible for detaining immigrants facing administrative deportation hearings, for a variety shortcomings.

It focused on such issues as failing to recognize mental health needs, family separation, inadequate access to telephones and legal materials and severe penal conditions, such as shackling, for women who are not serving criminal sentences.

Researchers cited such situations as a six-month pregnant woman without prenatal care access for more than a month and another woman, diagnosed with cervical cancer shortly before she was put into detention, who waited months to see a nurse, then saw an oncologist only after an emergency.

“The sad thing is that these horror stories continue,” said Alessandra Soler Meetze, executive director of the Arizona Civil Liberties Union.

The study also took ICE to task for aggressive government prosecution and detention of women who pose no security threat or flight risk.

“There is, under the law, mandatory detention for a great number of immigrants. But then there are many immigrants who aren’t subject to mandatory detention that they’re still insisting on detaining,” said the study’s author, Nina Rabin, the institute’s director of border research and co-director of the immigration clinic at the university’s James E. Rogers College of Law.

“So they’re going far beyond what the law requires.”

But Katrina S. Kane, ICE detention and removal field director in Arizona, noted that the study itself said its information was drawn from a small number of participants not necessarily representative of the entire detainee population, and that researchers relied on anonymous detainees’ self-reporting, without independent corroboration.

Those interviewed represent less than 0.0003 percent of more than 72,000 immigrants detained in Arizona before being deported in fiscal 2008, Kane said.

As for medical treatment, Kane disputed the facts surrounding the detainee believed to have had cervical cancer. She said the woman had surgery and chemotherapy before detention, then had more than 80 medical appointments while in custody, “including 15 offsite to consult with specialists and to complete diagnostic tests.”

Kane also said all medical facilities at all centers that ICE uses are required to comply with ICE’s national detention medical standards. And detainees can make free phone calls to consular officials, the Department of Homeland Security’s office of inspector general, lawyers and pro bono legal organizations, she said.

Rabin said ICE puts women into mandatory detention when there are alternatives and no flight risk or security threat.

Officials use five detention facilities in Arizona to house 3,000 of 28,750 immigration detainees held daily nationwide. Three of the Arizona sites, in Florence and Eloy, accommodate more than 300 women detainees.

Arizona is the nation’s busiest crossing point for illegal immigrants.

Third-year law students interviewed a total of 42 people, including 21 women who were or had been detainees. Two were detainees’ family members and 19 were lawyers or social workers.

Researchers were not allowed to interview ICE personnel or staffers from the detention facilities.

University anthropologist Ted Downing, a former state legislator, said the method used for the study was valid, defensible and common.

Former U.S. Rep. Rick Renzi

Members of the U.S. House will be sworn in Tuesday as the 111th Congress convenes, but Rep. Rick Renzi won’t be among them.

The Arizona Republican has ended a three-term career beneath the same cloud of suspicion that surrounded him during much of his last year in office, under federal indictment and facing a criminal trial in March.

Renzi chose not to seek re-election but also refused to resign, saying he would be proven innocent, and in November Arizona’s 1st District voters chose Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick of Flagstaff to replace him. On Monday, a day before the swearing-in ceremonies, Kirkpatrick’s Washington staff answered the phones that had been Renzi’s.

Renzi first won the seat in 2002, when he emerged from a large pack of contenders seeking what was then a newly created district that took in large swaths of rural Arizona. He easily won re-election twice, even as rumors began to swirl that he was being investigated by the federal government.

“Certainly his tenure as a representative will be defined now by the criminal investigations, and we will see where that goes,” said Fred Solop, a Northern Arizona University political scientist.

But Renzi deserves credit for a number of accomplishments in representing the 58,608-square mile district, which encompasses eight of the state’s 15 counties, according to Solop and retired congressman Jim Kolbe of Tucson.

“His accomplishments were to really tie together a very diverse district,” said Kolbe, who stepped down two years ago after 11 terms in the House representing southern Arizona.

“What he was known for throughout the district is bringing federal dollars for programs such as education, housing and transportation,” added Solop.

Still, Solop noted that from late February 2008 on, though the 50-year-old Renzi technically remained a congressman, his district effectively was unrepresented.

Over the last three years, Renzi’s effectiveness as a legislator declined dramatically, according to Congress.org, a public-service Web site that said Renzi’s power ranking among fellow congressmen plunged from 84th in 2005 to 435th, or least influential in the House, during 2008.

Once Renzi, a lawyer and businessman, was named in a 35-count indictment, replaced during the fall by a 44-count indictment, he lost his committee assignments and spent most of his time preoccupied with efforts to prepare to defend himself against criminal charges including extortion, conspiracy, racketeering, insurance fraud, wire fraud and money-laundering.

Renzi is accused of engineering a swap of federally owned mining land for his benefit and that of a former business partner, and of misappropriating insurance premiums from his company’s clients to help finance his first congressional campaign.

He and three co-defendants have pleaded not guilty.

Renzi declined to comment on Monday about his congressional career, Washington attorney Kelly Kramer said. Renzi’s phone number is unpublished, and attempts to reach him directly were unsuccessful.

“Really it was bringing home the federal dollars that was a huge legacy of Rick Renzi,” said Solop.

He noted that before Renzi was elected, though the district still covered northern Arizona and some Phoenix suburbs, “the money wasn’t coming into the rural communities.”

Among funds that Renzi also secured was a $5.5 million housing grant a year ago for the Navajo Nation and mass transit money for Coconino County’s Mountain Lion Transit bus system.

“Part of it was that the Bush administration campaigned for him, raised money for him and wanted him to hold that seat. So he was able to get influence within the government quite rapidly,” Solop said.

“He came on quite strong, and certainly this last year we could see over time he became more distant, less approachable. And this last term, he was not effective whatsoever.”

Kolbe said it was hard to imagine a district in the country as varied, ranging from Flagstaff to the mining areas of Greenlee County to cotton farmers around Casa Grande to the Navajo Nation.

“He did a very good job of tying it together,” Kolbe said. “He was a very hard worker in getting around the district.”

One of Renzi’s legacies, Kolbe said, was “proving that you can really represent a district like that even though it’s a very difficult task.”

Shelter worker Gilda Loureiro, (left, in an Aug. 14 photo) begins the nightly task of checking in deported people who have been dropped off by the Border Patrol at a Nogales port of entry. Loureiro tries to keep out people who work in the drug trade.

The Border Patrol experienced a turning-point year in Arizona in 2008, with increased manpower, resources and technology bringing dramatic drops in illegal immigrant arrests, top officials say.

They’re confident more is on the way in 2009, in part because of a continuing shift away from a policy under which most illegal immigrants are automatically allowed to return home after being apprehended sneaking across the border.

The heads of the patrol’s Tucson and Yuma sectors cite the goal of eventually eliminating most voluntary repatriation as a significant step toward deterring illegal entries. They say it ensures that those who cross into the United States unlawfully will pay a price for doing so.

“My goal has always been to eliminate voluntary return,” said Chief Robert Gilbert, head of the patrol’s Tucson sector, which covers most of the Arizona-Mexico border. “I believe that’s one of the keys to border security — that’s through certainty of arrest and a penalty for the crime.”

Programs aimed at adding consequences were increasingly part of the mix during 2008, when the patrol also added to its arsenal of agents, fences, barriers, roads, lights and cameras. The programs included prosecutions of some border-crossers for illegal entries and efforts that return migrants to the Mexican interior or to distant border communities to sever ties to their smugglers.

“We’ve been pretty successful in Yuma to ensure … that if you enter the United States illegally, there will be a consequence,” said Paul Beeson, chief of the Yuma sector, which covers the southwestern corner of Arizona.

During the 2008 fiscal year, 52,000 of the 317,000 illegal immigrants apprehended in the Tucson sector, or about one in six, were not voluntarily returned.

Isabel Garcia, Pima County legal defender and a longtime human rights activist, deplores the shift but isn’t surprised.

“It’s what we’ve been sounding the alarm about for over the last 10 years,” she said, “that the enforcement would continue to increase dramatically, especially trying to eliminate voluntary return, knowing full well that it has horrendous consequences for immigrants.”

Often, she said, they have spouses and children who are American citizens.

“Secondly and most importantly,” she said, “is that the public must wonder out loud what $30 billion to $40 billion of `border security measures’ have done for us. It’s brought major insecurity, deaths, suffering, separation of families, destruction of private and environmental treasures, political chaos such that we have now elected some of the most anti-immigrant individuals in our history.”

Apprehensions plunged in both the Tucson and Yuma sectors during the 2008 fiscal year when compared to the preceding 12 months.

Arrests dropped 16 percent, from 378,000 to 317,000, in the Tucson sector, the busiest region for illegal entries on the U.S.-Mexico border. They went down 78 percent, from 38,000 to 8,363, in the Yuma sector.

In the Tucson sector, historically more than 70 percent of those arrested in the most heavily trafficked areas southwest of Tucson re-entered the country.

It’s what Gilbert called “a wicked cycle.”

“They would just be sent back to Nogales and come back in, be sent back to Nogales and come back in,” he said. “Eventually we don’t catch them anymore. Either they went home or they were successful.”

Now, the situation is different.

Increased lights, fencing, roads, sensors and mobile and remote camera surveillance systems, as well as 70 illegal entry prosecutions a day, have cut the recidivism rate in that area to less than 30 percent, Gilbert said.

Tucson began prosecutions in March with 40 a day, totaling 9,600 by the end of September. Yuma’s prosecution program began more than a year earlier.

Both sectors also bring some of those arrested before immigration judges for administrative formal removal, typically for those who have overstayed visas.

In Tucson, nearly 10,000 others were processed through expedited removal — essentially removed without a hearing because they’ve entered illegally.

Among other programs, more than 18,600 people were flown to Mexico City; thousands were sent back, technically via voluntary returns, to such locations as El Paso and San Diego to keep them away from their smugglers. More than 12,000 people from countries other than Mexico were formally removed through U.S. immigration courts.

Activists fear harm to privately held areas in Petrified Forest

Environmentalists expressed concern Wednesday about possible mining within expanded boundaries of Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park and a planned natural gas well on a New Mexico national monument.

Critics and parks officials say the potential mineral extraction is possible because of privately held lands in the national park system.

A large and now-valuable potash deposit encompasses portions of and lies under a 195-square-mile addition to the Petrified Forest National Park that Congress authorized in 2004 but failed to fund. That means the park does not own all the land within the expanded area and can’t stop the mining unless it buys the property.

And at the Aztec Ruins National Monument in northwestern New Mexico, at least one additional natural gas well appears to be on the horizon, with another well also proposed for coalbed methane extraction at the half-square mile monument, said its archaeologist, Gary Brown. The site includes the remains of ancient homes and roundhouses that were occupied by Pueblo peoples.

Three natural gas wells currently are operating in private landholdings within the monument.

“These are symptomatic of a great problem found in the park system,” said Frank Buono, a retired national park superintendent now living in Sierra Vista.

More than 10 percent of the national park system’s 131,250 square miles are still privately held lands, and those owners have property rights, said Buono, who also is a board member of the Washington-based Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

The root of the problem, he said, is that funds for the National Park Service to buy those private holdings have virtually dried up.

If new wells and mining occur, said Jeff Ruch, PEER’s executive director, it would change the character of both parks.

“In the case of Aztec Ruins, we’re talking about multiple oil companies drilling right next to archaeological features. And presumably, people are not going to the monument to watch derricks.”

But Ed Hartman, owner of Manana Gas Inc., said its plans to drill sometime next year are mindful of the site’s historic significance.

“We’re very much aware of the need to protect the Aztec Ruins,” said Hartman, whose small energy company is headquartered in Albuquerque, N.M.

Hartman said the new well would be situated on a hill about 100 feet higher than and a half mile from the ruins, and that a derrick used for drilling would be dismantled once the well is completed, leaving only surface equipment.

But drilling wells does have an effect, although its not an intolerable one, said Brown, the monument’s archaeologist.

“There is a certain amount of noise as well as the activity of having trucks and personnel,” he said. “And all three of the (current) wells require access along the roads, and archaeological sites have been (affected) by two of the access roads.”

Petrified Forest Acting Superintendent Pat Thompson said the national park doesn’t own the land within the expanded boundaries.

Instead, it’s a combination of privately owned and state-owned property, “so the park has no control over what goes on in that proposed expansion,” she said.

Whether owners of the potash leases in Arizona will mine depends on what the price of potash is, and also whether it will be strip-type mining or underground mining, Thompson said.

“I have not heard from anybody, and I do not know what they would choose,” she said.

Mining cannot occur within the park itself. Congress has put federal lands within a national park off-limits to hard-rock mining and leases of oil, gas and other minerals, including potash, with limited leasing exceptions on three national recreation areas.

Where a valuable mineral deposit underlies nonfederal lands inside a park boundary, the owners of the subsurface rights can exercise those rights at some point, Buono said.

He noted that a fight is brewing in Pennsylvania over land authorized for a national memorial marking where Flight 93 crashed during the 9/11 attacks. That land is in private hands and its owners have refused to sell so far, he said.

Traffic at the Dennis DeConcini Port of Entry in Nogales increases during the holidays.

NOGALES, Ariz. – Eric Salguero and his cousins are on their annual international road trek for the Christmas holiday.

It’s the same for thousands of Mexican-Americans and Mexican nationals in the United States – paisanos, or countrymen, making a traditional migration southward, for whom there’s no place like grandma’s in Mexico for the holidays.

The exodus normally peaks on the weekend before Christmas, and it was playing out again this week in Arizona and elsewhere in the West, despite tough economic times.

In the border city of Nogales, pickups, SUVs and sedans filled with folks and packed with packages to the windowtops were a common sight. So were pieces of luggage or carriers taped on rooftops and more gift goodies packed onto steel grates attached to rear bumpers. Many of the vehicles bore California license plates.

“This weekend coming will be the heaviest weekend in the return of Mexicans who will spend the holidays in Mexico,” said Oscar de la Torre, Mexican consul in Douglas, the sister city to Agua Prieta, Mexico, in far southeastern Arizona.

De la Torre said his staff estimated that the ports of Agua Prieta and Naco, Son., would see at least a 10 percent increase of southbound holiday visitors this year. The two ports had around 85,000 vehicles cross through into Mexico and return at the end of the last holiday season, and 100,000 vehicles are expected to make the round trip this season.

“Culturally, Mexicans display great solidarity,” he said. “When an economic crisis is increasing, Mexicans believe they have to be with their family to comfort them – and looking for prosperity for next year,” he said.

He added, “Like Santa Claus, they arrive with gifts.”

Indeed, despite the hard times, people such as Salguero and his cousins were driving 30 to 40 hours, sometimes even more, to reach their relatives. They made a brief gas and pit stop Thursday en route from Los Angeles to their grandparents’ home in tiny Zipimeo in the state of Michoacan, a 30- to 32-hour trip.

“We usually do it every Christmas,” said Salguero, a 23-year-old education student at California State University, Fullerton and an elementary school teaching assistant. The drive through Nogales is safer than heading south through San Diego and then through Tijuana, he said.

“The economy was a concern, and some other family issues,” Salguero said, but they weren’t enough to keep the cousins in California. They refused to accept the idea of missing a trip to see their grandparents and other relatives, he said.

“When you drive through the Mexican towns, it’s a little bit chaotic,” Salguero said, noting that traffic can be very heavy and the roads are more basic than what’s found at home,

Gustavo Martinez, 16, of Fresno, Calif., was among five family members traveling to see relatives in Guadalajara, in the state of Jalisco, a trip he’s been making since he was about 7.

The gifts they were transporting this year were pretty much confined to clothes, he said. The trip itself, he said, “is always boring,” but Martinez said he was excited and looking forward to seeing his father’s parents.

Fernando Barragan, a 42-year-old process server from Victorville, Calif., was on a 40-hour drive-through with his wife and children, ages 18, 11 and 7, that began at 4 p.m. on Wednesday. The drive is tough, he said, “but there are people waiting for me” – and for the clothing and toys in his SUV.

Barragan was headed to Uruapan, Michoacan, for the first time in five years and it was the first trip for his whole family together.

The economic downturn put the squeeze on his family in terms of making the trip and their resources are limited.

“We’ve been saving for years to make the trip,” Barragan said.

In Nogales, U.S. Customs and Border Protection port supervisor Edith Serrano said there was a lot of traffic heading into Mexico.

“I thought they wouldn’t head south in tough economic times, but they are,” Serrano said.

Prosecutors on Friday formally asked to have murder charges dropped in the case of a U.S. Border Patrol agent who shot an illegal immigrant near the Mexican border, but his future remains clouded.

Nicholas Corbett has been assigned to desk duties since shortly after the Jan. 12, 2007, shooting death of Francisco Javier Dominguez Rivera of Puebla, Mexico, and there’s no immediate word whether he’ll be reassigned to field duty.

He also faces a civil suit filed this week by the family of Dominguez, who was killed during a confrontation that occurred hours after he had crossed the border. His three companions said he was surrendering when he was shot; Corbett said he shot in self-defense because Dominguez was going to smash his head with a rock.

Prosecutors left open the possibility that they could refile charges if they can develop new evidence that might help convict Corbett of second-degree murder, manslaughter or negligent homicide. Two trials earlier this year ended with jurors deadlocked on a verdict.

Attorneys representing the Cochise County Attorney’s Office filed a motion Friday to dismiss the charges without prejudice, meaning they could bring the charges again.

There is no statute of limitations for murder under Arizona law.

Border Patrol officials aren’t saying yet whether Corbett, 41, will resume active field patrol duties or will be given some other assignment.

“I don’t think that decision has been made yet,” said Dove Crawford, a spokeswoman for the patrol’s Tucson sector. “But I know that they (officials) will review his status.”

Crawford also said that because of the manner in which the charges were dismissed, the patrol will not make a statement about its internal investigation of the shooting.

Tucson sector Chief Robert Gilbert was on annual leave and unavailable for comment, Crawford said.

The special prosecutor in charge of the case for Cochise County, former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods, said he hopes the Border Patrol will not keep Corbett employed.

Woods cited comments from some jurors who spoke with the county attorney after the second trial ended last month.

“They believed that he was guilty but many of them felt that the (sheriff’s) investigation was so poor that they just felt that they couldn’t vote guilty,” Wood said.

He said all but one juror in the first trial apparently voted to find Corbett guilty.

Woods also noted several incidents over the past several years, not introduced at Corbett’s trials, in which police responded to alleged assault and domestic violence occurrences involving Corbett.

Woods said Corbett was arrested for beating a man without provocation in Cheltenham, Pa., and that police in Mesa and Chandler were called to Corbett’s house three times in 2007 for domestic violence.

“And two juries have not been able to reach a decision on whether he shot and killed somebody in cold blood. So I think it’s pretty clear that he should not be working for the Border Patrol,” Woods said. “They should fire him.”

Corbett’s lawyer, Sean Chapman, said the Pennsylvania incident was alcohol-related and occurred before Corbett joined the Border Patrol.

The Mesa Police Department thoroughly investigated the domestic violence incidents, all disputes with a female companion, and determined that no crime had been committed, Chapman said.

As for whether Corbett will remain employed, “the Border Patrol, like me, has always believed that he was innocent,” Chapman said. “In fact, early on in the case, Chief David Aguilar called Corbett personally and offered his support.”

Aguilar, the head of the U.S. Border Patrol, also wrote the Justice Department asking it to provide full support for Corbett including funding his defense, Chapman said.

Chapman said he’s had ongoing discussions with the Justice Department about funding the defense.

“It’s possible that they’re going to reimburse us for the cost of the defense,” Chapman said. “So any idea that he doesn’t have the full support of the Border Patrol is wrong.”

2 juries failed to reach verdict

Nicholas Corbett

A U.S. Border Patrol agent won’t be retried for a third time in shooting death of an illegal immigrant in the southern Arizona desert last year, a top Cochise County prosecutor said Thursday.

Chief Criminal Deputy County Attorney Doyle Johnstun said his office will move to dismiss charges against agent Nicholas Corbett without prejudice. Hung juries led to two mistrials earlier this year, the most recent one last month.

Johnstun said the method of dismissal would allow charges to be refiled if more evidence comes to light.

“It appears that on the state of the evidence, we can’t get a conviction,” said Johnstun. He said the office was leaning toward dismissal of the charges after the second hung jury, with County Attorney Ed Rheinheimer having made the decision within the past few days.

Rheinheimer was out of the country and could not be reached for comment, his office said.

Phoenix attorney and former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods, who served as special prosecutor for Rheinheimer’s office in the case, did not immediately return a call to his office.

Corbett was tried on second-degree murder, manslaughter and negligent homicide charges in the January 2007 death of Francisco Javier Dominguez-Rivera of Puebla, Mexico.

Corbett shot Dominguez-Rivera after stopping him and three others in the southern Arizona desert. Corbett said he fired in self-defense because Dominguez-Rivera was poised to throw a rock at this head, but the surviving witnesses said Dominguez-Rivera was on his knees surrendering.

Dominguez’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit Tuesday against Corbett in U.S. District Court.

Corbett’s lead attorney, Sean Chapman, who had not been told of the decision, said he and co-counsel Jim Calle are delighted.

“We both believed that Nick was innocent the whole entire time, and we’re glad that this burden has been lifted off his shoulders,” Chapman said.

Corbett has been assigned to administrative duties since being charged in the shooting.

Chapman said he anticipated that Corbett would back on regular duty, “but I don’t know what that would involve. It could involve back in the field, or it could be something else.”