This piece must have been controversial inside the magazine's offices. Conant wrote:
Arizona has outraged the nation with a new immigration law that obligates authorities to check the documents of anyone they believe is in the country illegally, based on a "reasonable suspicion" during a "lawful" stop. Some accuse lawmakers and the 70 percent of Arizonans who support the bill of acting like Nazis, or of turning Arizona into an apartheid state. But spend some time in Arizona, and you may come to see why so many Arizonans want this.
It's terrifying to live next door to homes filled with human traffickers, drug smugglers, AK-47s, pit bulls, and desperate laborers stuffed 30 to a room, shoes removed to hinder escape. During a month's reporting with police and other law-enforcement agents in Arizona last year, I met many scared people. One man who lived next to a "drop house" for Mexican workers slept with two guns under his bed, his children not allowed to play in the backyard. The sound of gunshots was not uncommon. "Four years ago this neighborhood was poodles and old ladies," he said, too frightened to give his name. "Now it's absolutely insane." That morning, authorities had raided the drop house. When the neighbor told me how his kids had been evacuated behind riot shields, he began to cry. Others, too, were unhappy: the undocumented workers taken from the house were exhausted, sweaty, and dead quiet as they sat on a curb with their hands cuffed, waiting to be taken away.
Within 24 hours I witnessed another bust, this one prompted by a tip from Tennessee authorities. They reported a threat to kill a kidnap victim, and a ransom demand for $3,500. Sheriff's deputies went to a pleasant house with a two-car garage. Inside, they found dozens of immigrants crammed into unfurnished bedrooms, the windows boarded from the inside, shoes and belts piled up in the closet. The search also turned up a Taser-like device, a sawed-off shotgun, and two pistols. Another day, I watched the Phoenix police break up a "stash house" filled with guns and hundreds of pounds of marijuana. An hour later they raided a McMansion adorned with hunting trophies and Scarface posters; a white SUV jammed with 300 pounds of marijuana was parked out front. (Sixty percent of all the marijuana that reaches the U.S. transits Arizona.) Again, the house was in a high-end development, nowhere near the border.
None of this means the new law is a good idea. In addition to Arizona, I've also lived in Russia, which requires its citizens to carry documents at all times. Police usually carry out spot checks on darker-skinned people from the Caucasus or the "stans"—people who often go to Russia as illegal migrant workers. These workers are also the targets of racially motivated attacks and killings. Average Russians don't bat an eye.
We don't want to head in that direction.
She sympathized alongside her media colleagues that "The overwhelming majority of Mexicans who come here are not criminals." But Conant suggested something should be done about illegal alien-smugglers and the growing problem of aliens involved in organized crime.
You can tell even from the online layout of the story that editors around her don't like this article. One headline for the piece is "Why Arizona Isn't Crazy, Only Wrong." In the middle of the story is a photo essay on "The Walled-Off World: Jericho, Berlin, Belfast, and other great walls in history."
"The Daily Obsession" video promoted in the story asks: "Arizona or Nazi Germany?" The video heavily promotes the Nazi charge, complete with Seth Meyers of Saturday Night Live making jokes about how Hitler's family gets a residual check every time someone says "Show me your papers."
