Border Politics on the Campaign Trail
TUCSON, Ariz., Sept. 21, 2006 — -- When ABC News came to Arizona's 8th Congressional district, the first thing Republican candidate Randy Graf wanted to do was show us where the bodies were kept.
A conservative who wants every illegal immigrant in the United States to return to where they came from, Graf took us to Pima County Medical Examiner's Office in Tucson to show us some of the hidden costs of the problem of illegal immigration.
"This is a refrigerated trailer that they had to bring in," Graf said. "We don't have enough room or facility for all the illegal aliens found in the desert out here."
The morgue has a capacity for 120 bodies, but has been forced to use the refrigerated tractor trailer Graf showed us to store bodies because of a record-breaking intake of corpses due to the 200 or so dead illegal immigrants found in Arizona's southern desert each year.
Depending upon the condition of the corpse, the trailer can hold between 60 and 70 bodies.
As in other states and congressional districts across the country, Graf has seized upon an issue -- being tough on illegal immigration -- that Republicans think will be a winner for them. This is especially true in Arizona's 8th district -- one of the 10 congressional districts sharing a border with Mexico.
As Graf offered ABC News a look at the morgue, a hospital official asked us to leave, and tried to stop our cameras from filming.
"This whole issue is a sensitive issue to many folks," Graf said as we walked back to the cars.
It is sensitive, and it is everywhere in this border state.
We then drove 110 miles south of Tucson to the Arizona-Mexico border. We had to interrupt an interview as U.S. border patrol agents drove by, tracking a van on the other side of the border that they suspected was full of potential illegal immigrants -- Mexicans looking to cross the border illegally.
The van stopped in some bushes and seemed to have let the potential illegal immigrants out of the vehicle.
"It looks like they probably unloaded the folks that were in that van over there," Graf said. "They will most likely just park over there and stay over there until the opportunity comes for them to cross the fence."
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