Arizona county is hotbed for illegal immigration along U.S.-Mexico boundary.
COCHISE COUNTY, Ariz. — For more than a century, people have come to this arid expanse of land seeking their fortunes. Some found it; many others discovered hardship and danger.
In the 1800s, it was prospectors seeking silver. Cochise County is the home of Tombstone, a boomtown known best for legendary lawmen and daring gunslingers.
Today, it is the scene of a stream of immigrants crossing over illegally from Mexico, with which the county shares an 82-mile border.
“Fifty percent of all the illegal immigrants that are apprehended every year are coming through southern Arizona, through the Tucson sector (which includes Cochise),” said Carol Capas, spokeswoman for the Cochise County sheriff’s office.
Some seek a better life for their families. But local Arizona authorities say many bring with them drugs and violence — a return to lawlessness.
“Violent crime has spilled over into the United States,” Capas said of the raging drug war in Mexico.
Hamilton, Ohio, is 1,786 miles away from Bisbee, the Cochise County seat. But it’s no less a hotbed of sentiment over illegal immigration.
This week, Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones and State Rep. Courtney Combs, R- Hamilton, who are advocating for immigration reform in Ohio, will see first-hand the place where dashed hopes, desperate dreams and violent ambitions cross into this country: The U.S. border...
