Save Our Sheriff

SaveOurSheriff wrote on 1276884567|%e %b, %H:%M (%O ago)
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Joe Arpaio, the freewheeling sheriff of Arizona’s Maricopa County, defending his state’s tough new immigration law, saying that it will not, as critics have charged, lead to widespread racial profiling.

The new law directs police to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they’re illegal immigrants. “We’ve been doing almost the same as that new law,” Arpaio told reporters. “Now, law enforcement won’t have any problems.”

Arpaio has taken heat for turning the sheriff’s office into a sort of freelance immigration-enforcement agency. He has he set up a hot line for the public to report immigration violations, conducts crime and immigration sweeps in heavily Latino neighborhoods and frequently raids workplaces for people in the U.S. illegally.

Many in the Latino community consider him and his policies to be racist, a charge he denied with vigor.

“I’m not a racist, like people say I am,” he said. “I have never gone on the street corner and grabbed someone because they look like they’re from another country. We don’t do that.” Officers ask about immigration status only if people have been detained for a crime, such as speeding, Arpaio said.

Arpaio explained that 18 percent of inmates who go through the Maricopa county jail system are found to be undocumented. Then he added that stepped-up enforcement is needed because of escalating violence on the border.

Addressing another criticism, he said the law protects victims and witnesses who are here illegally from deportation, noting that most of his office’s crime tips come from illegal immigrants.

“I think the panic and the hype and the misinformation is causing people to feel it’s worse that it is,” he said.

Arpaio said President Barack Obama has misunderstood the new law, saying perhaps the controversy called for a “beer summit” similar to when the president met with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley to calm tensions after a racially-tinged arrest.

“Why doesn’t he invite me to the White House so I can have some wine?” Arpaio asked.