By Alia Beard Rau | 12 November 2016
AZ CENTRAL/USA TODAY — A name straight out of Arizona’s controversial immigration past has popped up on President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team.
It’s not outgoing Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio … at least not yet. And It’s not former state Sen. Russell Pearce either — but that’s close.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who helped Pearce write Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070, told a Witchita TV station about his new role on Trump’s “immigration policy transition team.”
“There’s going to be a lot to do there in part because Mr. Trump and Mr. Obama are diametric opposites when it comes to immigration policy so there will be a lot of changes,” Kobach told KWCH. “There’s no question the wall is going to get built. The only question is how quickly will it get done and who pays for it?”
The Arizona Legislature passed SB 1070 and Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed it into law in 2010.
Pearce and Kobach worked on the legislation together. The law made it a state crime to be in the country illegally. It led to proposed copycat legislation in some states and boycotts of Arizona by others. It was lauded as the nation’s toughest anti-immigration measure at the time. Many of its provisions have since been ruled illegal.
Brewer, who endorsed Trump in February and became a high-profile surrogate on the national news circuit, told the Arizona Republic Thursday she is now also on Trump’s transition team.
“It hasn’t been announced yet, but I’ve been working with them on different policies, homeland security and the border, and education,” Brewer said from her home.
She said she looks forward to “helping him be successful” in whatever role that may be.
Kobach, has an Ivy League education and ties to the controversial Washington, D.C.-based anti-immigration group the Reform Law Institute, the public-interest law affiliate of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit Alabama-based civil-rights organization, has described FAIR as an anti-immigrant hate-group. […]
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