PHOENIX (AP) — Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs said Monday she is willing to work with President-elect Donald Trump’s new administration on border security issues like stopping fentanyl trafficking, but not in areas that she said could harm Arizona families such as mass deportation.
Hobbs traveled to the Arizona-Mexico border on Monday to trumpet her state’s National Guard work helping crack down on smuggling of the deadly synthetic opioid into the U.S. through Nogales, Arizona. More than half of all border seizures of the drug are made in Nogales.
“Border security was a core issue of the Trump campaign," Hobbs told reporters as vehicles moved behind her. “I look forward to having conversations with the incoming president about Arizona’s needs, including border security and the work we’ve done here to build these partnerships that are actually producing results and how we can continue those partnerships under his administration.”
But, she added, there are Arizona families who “are worried about threats from the Trump administration as well.”
“I will not tolerate actions that harm Arizonans, that harm our communities and quite honestly, divert resources from providing real security at our border,” Hobbs said.
Trump has promised to conduct the largest deportation operation in American history, something that would upend the lives of the 11 million people living in the United States without authorization, many of whom have family members who are U.S. citizens.
“I will stand up to protect Arizonans from harm by the federal government, from anyone," Hobbs said, but “I’m not going to comment on hypotheticals. We don’t know what a mass deportation plan will look like, what resources it will involve.”
Hobbs also touted Operation Secure, her initiative deploying the National Guard to assist local and federal enforcement in Arizona's border communities like Nogales. The governor said 170 Arizona National Guard members are assigned to counterdrug efforts statewide, including 40 at the border in Nogales.
The governor's border visit comes less than two weeks after Democrats suffered blistering losses at the polls in Arizona, with Trump defeating Vice President Kamala Harris by a margin of about 185,000 votes statewide and beefing up the Republican majority in the Arizona Legislature.
Hobbs said Monday that border security is not a “Republican or Democratic issue” and she will work with “anyone” to keep the border safe.
Troy Miller, acting head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, also spoke at the news conference and called National Guard members “a critical force multiplier” for his agency's operations at the Nogales port.
“The scope of this problem is too large and the stakes are too high for us to do this work alone,” Miller said. “That’s why I’m so proud of the partnerships we have built, especially the ones right here in Arizona.”
FILE - Vehicles wait in line to enter the United States through the Dennis DeConcini Port of Entry in downtown Nogales, Ariz., June 1, 2009. (Mark Henle/The Arizona Republic via AP, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — A man fatally stabbed three people across a swath of Manhattan on Monday morning, carrying out a series of random attacks without uttering a word to his victims, officials said.
The 51-year-old suspect was in police custody after being found with blood on his clothes and the two kitchen knives he was carrying, authorities said. The suspect's and victims' names weren't immediately released.
“Three New Yorkers. Unprovoked attacks that left us searching for answers on how something like this could happen,” Mayor Eric Adams said at a news conference.
Investigators were working to understand what propelled the rampage, which happened within 2 1/2 hours.
“No words exchanged. No property taken. Just attacked, viciously,” said Joseph Kenny, the New York Police Department’s chief of detectives. “He just walked up to them and began to attack them with the knives.”
The first stabbing, on West 19th Street, killed a 36-year-old construction worker who was standing by his work site near the Hudson River a little before 8:30 a.m. About two hours later and across the island of Manhattan, a 68-year-old man was attacked while fishing in the East River near East 30th Street.
Both men died shortly after the stabbings, Kenny said.
The suspect then apparently traveled north near the riverfront. Around 10:55 a.m., a 36-year-old woman was stabbed multiple times near the United Nations headquarters on East 42nd Street, Kenny said. She died later Monday at a hospital, police said.
A passing cabdriver saw the third attack and alerted police on nearby First Avenue and East 46th Street, officials said. An officer soon apprehended the suspect.
The bloodshed happened in a major city where, like in others, crime has taken a prominent place in political discourse and everyday concerns in the years since pandemic lockdowns emptied streets and spurred disorder. Killings in New York City so far in 2024 have declined 14% in two years, but serious assaults are up about 12%, according to police statistics.
Some recent stabbings in public places have drawn attention, including a fatal attack at the Coney Island subway station just weeks ago.
Adams, a Democrat, called Monday’s violence “a clear, clear example” of failures in the criminal justice system and elsewhere.
The suspect in Monday's rampage, who apparently is homeless, had been sentenced in a criminal case a few months ago and was arrested in a grand larceny case last month, officials said.
The rampage came three years after a string of stabbings at various points along a subway line killed two people and wounded two others within a few hours.
In 2019, four people who were sleeping in doorways and sidewalks in Chinatown were beaten to death, and a fifth was seriously injured, early one Saturday morning.
Associated Press writers Karen Matthews in New York and Anthony Izaguirre in Albany, New York, contributed.
This story has been corrected to show that the construction worker who was killed was 36, not 26.
NYPD officers stand at the site where the suspect of a stabbing spree was captured outside Turkish House, New York, Monday, Nov. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
A jacket covered in blood lays on the ground at the site of a stabbing spree near the United Nations Headquarters in New York, Monday, Nov. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Blood stains the ground at the site of a stabbing spree near the United Nations Headquarters, New York, Monday, Nov. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Blood stains is the ground at the site of stabbing spree near the United Nations Headquarters in New York, Monday, Nov. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
A shoe is left at the site of a stabbing spree near the United Nations Headquarters in New York, Monday, Nov. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
This image provided by Office of the New York Mayor shows New York Mayor Eric Adams, left center, as he briefs the media on a series of incidents that took place within the confines of the 10th and 17th Police Precincts, Monday, Nov. 18, 2024. (Mayoral Photography Office/Michael Appleton via AP)
NYPD officers stand at the site where the suspect of a stabbing spree was captured outside Turkish House, New York, Monday, Nov. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
NYPD officers stand at the site of stabbing spree near the United Nations Headquarters in New York, Monday, Nov. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
An NYPD officer works at the scene of a stabbing in New York, Monday, Nov. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/David R. Martin)
This image released by the New York City Police Department shows a knife that was recovered at a stabbing in New York, Monday Nov. 18, 2024. (New York City Police Department via AP)
