PHOENIX - The architect of the state's tough new immigration law is branding as fiction a report by National Public Radio that said the private-prison industry was a driving force behind the bill.
Laura Sullivan, in a report broadcast Thursday, said these private prison companies "had a plan, a new business model to lock up illegal immigrants." She said that plan - by Sen. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa - was sculpted in a closed-door meeting last December at ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council.
"And the plan became Arizona's immigration law," Sullivan reported.
But Pearce said the report ignored a host of key points.
One threshold issue is that what came out of that ALEC meeting is not what eventually was signed into law as SB 1070. There were several changes made before it was signed by Gov. Jan Brewer.
People are also reading…
There also is the fact that the official position of ALEC is not to support private prisons but instead to find alternatives to incarceration to save money.
But Pearce said the big problem is what was missing.
Sullivan specifically said that Pearce, before taking his idea to the floor of the Senate, "first took it to a hotel conference room."
What wasn't mentioned, Pearce said, is the history of the issue.
"I've introduced this bill in '05, '06, '07, '08, '09 and 2010," Pearce said.
Those bills are not identical to what is in SB 1070.
But Pearce sponsored legislation last year to prohibit public officials from limiting the ability of police officers to question or detain people suspected of being illegal immigrants. Another 2009 bill would make any illegal immigrant in Arizona guilty of the state crime of trespass.
Both are key elements of what eventually became SB 1070.
In fact, his sponsorship of these issues goes back even further: Pearce had legislation in 2003 requiring police who arrest such suspects to try to verify their legal status and notify the state attorney general and what was at the time the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, the precursor to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
And a comprehensive bill with many of the same provisions actually was approved by the Legislature in 2006, only to be vetoed by then-Gov. Janet Napolitano.
Pearce specifically denied that SB 1070 is the work of lobbyists.
"I wrote this bill with the help of some good constitutional attorneys," he said. "Never have had a conversation with prison industry on this bill."
He did acknowledge there were prison-industry representatives present when he took the bill to ALEC last December in hopes of making a model that other states can imitate.
"They're part of a committee that I'm required to go through to get model legislation passed," Pearce said. "That has to be presented to the board."
Sullivan refused to respond to specific questions about what she did - and did not - include in her report.
"I feel that the reporting in my story is accurate, and I stand behind it," she said.
The NPR report on its take on the immigration law, though, has become part of the political debate less than a week before the election. Democratic Party officials and candidates have seized on the story and sent out links in hopes of swaying public sentiment.
"Brewer's governing office AND campaign office are overrun with lobbyists," party spokeswoman Jennifer Johnson wrote. "And she is letting them run Arizona, shape our laws and control decisions that affect the lives of our hardworking citizens."
Key provisions of SB 1070 never took effect after U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton issued an injunction. That is up for review Monday before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
In her NPR broadcast, Sullivan said the new law "could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before."
"And it could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to private prison companies responsible for housing them," Sullivan said.
There are anywhere from 350,000 to 450,000 illegal immigrants in the state, depending on whose figures are believed.
Pearce said he does believe that SB 1070, if implemented, will result in more illegal immigrants' being detained and turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE does contract with private companies to incarcerate those who are not immediately deported, "but that's between them and ICE," Pearce said.
"I have nothing to do with that. I don't set their policies or encourage them to do anything except enforce the law."
The NPR report also said SB 1070 "requires police to lock up anyone they stop who cannot show proof they entered the country legally."
But the bill simply requires police, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of anyone they already have stopped if there is "reasonable suspicion" that person is in the country illegally. There is no mandate to make an arrest, with the law saying police "may securely transport" an illegal immigrant to federal custody.
The NPR report also mentions Brewer and the fact that two top advisers are former lobbyists for private prison companies. But Brewer said any suggestion that she signed SB 1070 to benefit private prisons is based on a mistaken assumption.
"NPR must be like the president or Eric Holder: They didn't read the bill," she said.
"(SB) 1070 doesn't cause incarceration decisions by the state government - only the federal government," Brewer said. "Any decisions about their public or private prisons are made by them, not Arizona."
As for illegal immigrants' incarceration on charges of violating a new state trespass law, Pearce said they would wind up in county jails, not in the state prison system, which already contracts with private companies.
Pearce pointed out that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio already has designated a portion of his "Tent City" jail for illegal immigrants if the law takes effect.
