When a 63-page packet arrived at the Pima County Recorder’s Office in January, it was filled with jumbled punctuation marks and rambling pseudo-legal phrasing designed to circumvent the U.S. government. “I hereby Asseverate, Repudiate and Revoke my Citizenship, if any ever existed, with the Legal fiction known as the ‘UNITED STATES’ Government (Corporation), USA Inc, and any and all subsidiary corporations both known (STATE, COUNTY, CITY,) and unknown under its control,” the sender wrote. The packet was just one in a recent flood of filings submitted in Arizona by so-called sovereign citizens, a group whose ideology has garnered a reputation for conflict with government officials, law enforcement officers and members of the public—conflicts that, in some cases, have turned violent. By filing specially formatted paperwork, adherents of the ideology believe they can remove themselves from what they view as an illegitimate government. They’re increasingly choosing to start the process in Pima County. The Pima County Recorder’s Office went from receiving around 50 such filings in 2020 to more than 1,400 in 2022—a sharp spike that parallels a national resurgence in the sovereign citizen movement, according to a months-long review of public records by AZCIR’s Isaac Stone Simonelli. In this first installment of a three-part series, AZCIR explores the impact of this growing movement, including how segments of Arizona’s population are creating what experts say is a pathway to radicalization. | 
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