She didn’t start that way, rising to the position of Maricopa County Attorney in April 2022 after the resignation of Allister Adel. But then Mitchell defeated Democratic challenger Julie Gunnigle in a special election that fall, and now the incumbent seeks her first full four-year term in office.
To do so, she’ll have to win the Republican primary over longtime county attorney’s office employee Gina Godbehere, who is attempting to flank Mitchell from the right. (Mitchell is no moderate, though — she endorsed former president Donald Trump in March.) Then Mitchell will have to take down Democrat Tamika Wooten in the general election.
So far, Mitchell has refused to debate Godbehere, who has called Mitchell out for giving a “sweetheart deal” to Arizona’s former prisons chief after he drunkenly engaged in an armed standoff with more than 50 police officers. Instead, Mitchell has stuck to releasing campaign ads, through which she can hit her talking points without challenge.
Mitchell’s most recent campaign ad, posted on social media, inserts the county attorney into a favorite conservative issue: the border between the United States and Mexico.
Here’s a look at the ad and its claims.
🚨NEW AD ALERT🚨
— Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell (@Rachel1Mitchell) May 29, 2024
Joe Biden’s open border policies have been a complete disaster and Arizona is on the front lines.
I’m fighting back. I’m prosecuting border related crimes and enforcing the rule of law.
I’m proud to be endorsed by Arizona Law Enforcement and former Governor… pic.twitter.com/YORdgd6tIs
THE CLAIM: “Joe Biden’s open-border policies have been a complete disaster, and Arizona is on the frontlines. This is the new epicenter of the border crisis.”
THE FACTS: There are several details to parse here.
First, let’s address what Mitchell calls the “open-border policies” of President Joe Biden. In short, the border’s not nearly as open as Mitchell leads you to believe.
Mitchell herself has admitted as much, saying that during Biden’s presidency, the Drug Enforcement Administration has been seizing a lot of fentanyl in Arizona. "I have seen Biden's own DEA tell us that in 2022 and 2023, over half of the fentanyl seized in the United States was seized in Arizona," Mitchell said during a press conference in March. The DEA’s Phoenix division seized more than 40 million fentanyl pills and more than 380 pounds of fentanyl powder in Arizona last year.
If the border is wide open and unguarded, how do they keep catching it?
The fact is not much about border policy has changed under Biden. The Biden administration did end Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols, which required more migrants to remain in Mexico during the processing of their asylum claims. Biden also rolled back — after briefly expanding — Title 42, a public health restriction that allowed for easier expulsions of immigrants during the pandemic.
On the other hand, some have said the Biden administration is quietly still separating families entering the country to seek asylum, despite the president saying he would take a more humane approach to immigration policy.
What has changed is the fact that the number of migrants on the move is increasing, a trend that will only continue as the human-made climate crisis worsens and life in Latin America, Africa and other parts of the world becomes increasingly unstable and violent. In the first three years of Biden’s term, U.S. officials have encountered 6.3 million migrants at the southern border, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
As for Arizona being the new epicenter of the border crisis, there’s nothing new about it. Arizona always has been on the border and always has been a center for migration.
THE CLAIM: “I’m fighting back, prosecuting border-related crimes and enforcing the rule of law.”
THE FACTS: How exactly is Mitchell fighting back?
For one, she’s backing the highly controversial ballot measure HCR 2060, a laundry list of GOP ideas that are adjacent to but not directly related to the border. Critics say it’s a spiritual successor to Arizona’s notorious SB 1070 law, which the Supreme Court mostly struck down in 2012, and will lead to widespread racial profiling. Independent estimates note it will cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars to implement even though it does not come with funding. One estimate projects the measure will have with an annual price tag of $3.2 billion.
If that counts as fighting back, we suppose Mitchell is doing it. But how is she prosecuting border-related crimes?
Well, she isn’t. That’s the job of federal prosecutors, not Mitchell. And the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona has been prosecuting a lot of border-related crimes, including for fentanyl trafficking, fentanyl trafficking and more fentanyl trafficking.
Mitchell has been prosecuting crimes, but they’re crimes in her jurisdiction. Mitchell may be able to make such a claim if HCR 2060, which makes it a state crime to be in Arizona illegally, passes in November and withstands legal challenge. But that hasn’t happened yet.
THE CLAIM: “If Washington, D.C., isn’t going to do anything about this crisis, we will. Join me, and let’s get this done.”
THE FACTS: The crisis at the border is indeed growing worse because of federal inaction. In February, Republicans in Congress blocked a bipartisan Senate deal that would have boosted funding for border patrol by $20 billion. Without passage of the bill, ports of entry, border agencies and immigration courts have remained understaffed.
But if by “Washington” Mitchell really means Biden, recent events have taken the sting out of that claim. On June 5, Biden issued an executive order that effectively halts asylum claims at the southern border of the U.S. until the number of daily encounters with migrants drops below 2,500. The last time daily encounters were that low was in July 2020.
This policy is a serious, severe asylum crackdown that contradicts Biden’s rhetoric during the 2020 campaign. In fact, it bears striking similarity to efforts undertaken by the Trump administration.
”Let’s get this done,” Mitchell’s ad concludes, imploring voters to keep her in office. But unless there are some pretty big changes in state law — and there might be come 2025 — that office has little to do with anything Mitchell talks about in this ad. But Mitchell’s a politician, and stoking border fears is red meat to conservative voters.
Striking a tough-on-the-border stance may get them to the polls, but in reality, enforcing immigration law is not Mitchell’s lane.
