A few hundred feet from the US-Mexico border in Nogales, Arizona, Laura Aldana chuckled at the suggestion – made by both leading presidential candidates – that the region had fallen into chaos.
“Where?” she asked rhetorically. She gestured toward the street outside the downtown formalwear boutique where she works. “There’s almost too little to do here.”
Elsewhere in town, Oscar Felix Jr, a local radio host, shook his head at the idea that there was a crisis. “Yeah, no we are good.”
And a hundred miles east, in the border town of Douglas, Peggy Christiansen, a pastor at the First Presbyterian church, cringed. “I look at those conversations on TV, or on the news – and it just makes me mad,” she said. “The politicians are creating the mayhem.”
In Arizona – a key battleground state – residents living near the border are finding their region the centre of attention in a presidential election cycle where immigration has emerged as a top concern for voters.
