Thread: Appeals court reverses ban on Sheriff Joe Arpaio workplace raids

Appeals court reverses ban on Sheriff Joe Arpaio workplace raids

MCSO raids Phoenix business in 2011

Two alleged illegal immigrants are hand cuffed with white zip ties after Maricopa County Sheriff deputies raided Allied Tube and Conduit in Phoenix on Tuesday, April 26, 2011. Carlos Chavez/ The Republic


Megan Cassidy, The Republic | azcentral.com12:28 p.m. MST May 2, 2016


(Photo: The Republic)


A federal court of appeals has lifted a judge's ban on Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's controversial workplace raids, according to a decision released Monday.

The ruling reverses a preliminary injunction issued last year by U.S. District Court Judge David Campbell. Campbell is presiding over a federal lawsuit in which Puente Arizona and other civil-rights groups are challenging the merits of two state laws that make it a felony for undocumented immigrants to use stolen identities to obtain work.

In Campbell's January 2015 ruling, Campbell said the laws likely were unconstitutional because they are pre-empted by federal law.

Monday's 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling disagreed.

The opinion, issued by Senior District Judge Robert S. Lasnik and Circuit Judges Barry G. Silverman and Richard C. Tallman, rejected the notion that the laws uniformly were pre-empted by federal law.

The panel found that although some applications of the laws may conflict with the federal government, there wouldn't be an issue when they were used against U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.

It is unclear how the ruling would affect the day-to-day operations of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.

Arpaio had disbanded his work-site unit before the preliminary injunction.

He could not be immediately reached for comment.

“It’s a setback, but we think we will prevail. We are considering a number of different options going forward.”

," said Jessica Vosburgh, a staff attorney for National Day Laborer Organizing Network

Plaintiffs' attorneys said they disagreed with the legal analysis that the panel used to come to their decision.

"It’s a setback, but we think we will prevail," said Jessica Vosburgh, a staff attorney for National Day Laborer Organizing Network. "We are considering a number of different options going forward."

Although the underlying suit challenges the laws themselves, it names Arpaio and County Attorney Bill Montgomery as defendants, arguing that they used the laws less for law enforcement and more as a deportation machine.

Attorneys representing immigrant-rights group Puente, the American Civil Liberties Union and several other plaintiffs filed the motion for a preliminary injunction shortly after filing a class-action lawsuit in June 2014. That suit seeks to eliminate the last legal footing Arpaio had to conduct his own brand of immigration enforcement using workplace raids.

The ID-theft provisions were enacted as part of an attempt by lawmakers to crack down on employers of undocumented workers under the 2007 Legal Arizona Workers Act.

Under federal law, workers are required to show employers identification proving they are authorized to work legally in the U.S.

Undocumented immigrants, however, often used documents with invented, borrowed or stolen Social Security numbers to get jobs.

The Arizona law made it a felony to use ID theft to gain employment, even in cases where the worker was using fictitious names with invented Social Security numbers that belonged to no one.

After the law was passed, Arpaio, and former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, used the ID-theft provisions as legal backing to conduct work-site raids that overwhelmingly targeted workers, not employers.

Montgomery continued the practice of prosecuting undocumented workers for ID theft after taking office in November 2010.

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/...aids/83835390/

Joe Arpaio defeats immigrant groups in court; Arizona ID theft law upheld

Ban On Arpaio's Work Raids Lifted

By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Monday, May 2, 2016

States can impose their own stiff penalties on illegal immigrants and others who steal identities to get jobs, a federal appeals court ruled Monday, upholding Arizona’s law and dealing a setback to immigrant rights advocates.

The decision is yet another victory for Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and more broadly for Arizona, which has been a pioneer in trying to find ways to punish illegal immigrants, stepping into a void left by the Bush and Obama administrations.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said there are still some questions about how police and prosecutors use the identity theft laws, but on their face they do not violate the Constitution nor trample on the federal government’s ability to set national immigration laws.

As long as the laws apply to anyone, including U.S. citizens who steal others’ identities, they are allowed — even if the legislature intended them chiefly as a way to strike at one of the symptoms of illegal immigration, the judges said.

“In this case, Arizona exercised its police powers to pass criminal laws that apply equally to unauthorized aliens, authorized aliens, and U.S. citizens,” Circuit Court Judge Richard C. Tallman wrote in the unanimous opinion. “Just because some applications of those laws implicate federal immigration priorities does not mean that the statute as a whole should be struck down.”

The identity theft law was one of a series of changes Arizona enacted over the past decade to try to put pressure on illegal immigrants.

The Supreme Court has already upheld a state law requiring all businesses to use the federal E-Verify program to check their employees’ work authorization, while the justices split on another law, SB 1070, striking down Arizona’s stiffer penalties against illegal immigrants but upholding the part that orders police to check the legal status of those they encounter in their regular duties, and who they suspect are in the country illegally.

In 2007 and 2008, the state updated its laws to punish anyone who used a false identity, such as a stolen or fake Social Security number, to try to get a job.

Arizona at the time had the highest rate of identity fraud in the country.

Immigrant rights groups sued, arguing that the state was trying to interfere with federal powers to set immigration law, and they challenged Sheriff Arpaio in particular for using the law to pursue illegal immigrants.

A federal district court initially agreed and struck down the law. But the appeals court on Monday reversed that ruling and sent the case back to the district court, saying it needed to see how the law was being applied although it didn’t appear to conflict with the federal government.

“Although most of these enforcement actions have been brought against unauthorized aliens, some authorized aliens and U.S. citizens have also been prosecuted,” the judges said. “And while many of the people prosecuted under the identity theft laws used a false identity to prove that they are authorized to work in the United States, other defendants used false documents for non-immigration related reasons.”

Puente Arizona, the group that sued Sheriff Arpaio, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sheriff Arpaio, though, already conceded to the groups by disbanding his special identity theft unit and halting enforcement of the new law in 2014.
At the time, he said President Obama’s efforts to grant work permits to as many as 5 million illegal immigrants meant those people didn’t need to resort to stealing others’ identities.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...arizona-id-t/?

By Edgard Portela | May 4, 2016 | 7:45 AM EDT

A federal appeals court ruling upholding Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s authority to enforce Arizona state law that makes it a felony for unauthorized immigrants to use stolen identities to obtain work has been bitterly denounced by the hosts of Telemundo’s morning show, Un Nuevo Día.

Telemundo’s Diego Schoening and Adamari Lopez railed against Arpaio’s record enforcing the law, and condemned the Maricopa County facilities built in their words for “people…earning their living honestly” (but who have been arrested for identity theft) with “concentration camps.”

DIEGO SCHOENING, HOST, UN NUEVO DIA: ...and I think that he has built these small like, sorry I say it this way, concentration camps where he separates Latin Americans, segregates them, puts them in there to separate them from Americans

ADAMARI LOPEZ, HOST, UN NUEVO DIA: People that are working, that are doing something for the country, people that are earning their living honestly!

Unauthorized immigrants in the workplace often used documents with invented, borrowed or stolen Social Security numbers to get jobs. In enforcing the ID-theft provisions of the Arizona law, Sheriff Arpaio conducted workplace raids that led to the arrests of more 700 unauthorized immigrants in violation of these laws, and by so doing enabled federal officials to initiate deportation proceedings against them.

It’s actually pretty simple. If you’re in the United States and you stole or invented out of whole cloth a false identity, you will be and should be in trouble with the law. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service, in point of fact, has declared identity theft as “America’s fastest growing crime.”

In addition to Telemundo’s morning show hosts pontificating against the law, the network’s news anchors also didn’t miss a beat in characterizing Sheriff Arpaio as “anti-immigrant.” This flies in the face of the Sheriff’s open support for legal immigration, including the recent plans he announced to recruit more legal immigrants with green cards to work in his department.

Maybe it’s just me, but you’re not earning your living ‘honestly’ if you are stealing someone else’s identity, on top of breaking federal immigration law in the first place.

Below you can find the transcript of the cited segment on Telemundo's morning show Un Nuevo Dia aired on May 3:

UN NUEVO DIA (TELEMUNDO)

5/3/16

7:10:38 AM - 7:13:52 AM EST | 3 MIN 14 SEC

ADAMARI LOPEZ, HOST, UN NUEVO DIA: Where things are not very good is in Arizona.

DANIEL SARCOS, HOST, UN NUEVO DIA: Yes sir, the controversial Maricopa County Sheriff yesterday scored a legal victory in a federal appeals court like Neida Sandoval told us a few minutes ago. The three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor, and listen well - my dear friends, my dear countrymen, my dear Latin American brothers, ruled in favor of making anti-immigrant raids on workplaces.

RASHEL DIAZ, HOST, UN NUEVO DIA: For you to understand what happens with this, this gives green light to Sheriff Arpaio to resume this way their raid operations that was what he did with the law that applied to it, it prohibits businesses hiring undocumented immigrants [to work] for them, these officers come in as a surprise to businesses and obviously begin to investigate what is the immigration status of these employees.

ADAMARI LOPEZ, HOST, UN NUEVO DIA: This is the freedom it gives, this ruling, to Joe Arpaio to send his sheriffs as a surprise to different places in that area of ​​Arizona, there's, um, I think that composes Phoenix, Scottsdale, Glendale and Mesa, among others, to bring these officers to insert themselves in these workplaces and can make these raids that are obviously harmful to many Latin American families.

DIEGO SCHOENING, HOST, UN NUEVO DIA: Note that this talks about the five important places in Arizona where for the most part they’re gathered, not only Mexicans - but Central Americans, Latin Americans, for me it’s something that really hurts because we were giving contrast yesterday, right? Where we spoke exactly in San Diego that the door [on the San Diego border wall] opened for three minutes so that families could reunite, but the greatest, for me, the biggest culprit of this separation of families has been precisely Sheriff Arpaio, who what has been dedicated, [cough] forgive me, for imprisoning people, separating families and broken families, and I think that he has built these small like, sorry I say it this way, concentration camps where he separates Latin Americans, segregates them, puts them in there to separate them from Americans.

ADAMARI LOPEZ, HOST, UN NUEVO DIA: People who are working, and doing something for the country, people who are earning a living honestly!

RASHEL DIAZ, HOST, UN NUEVO DIA: They aren’t criminals, who are not doing anything against the law, somehow this creates a panic among our people trying to seek a better life and it’s not fair.

DANIEL SARCOS, HOST, UN NUEVO DIA: I will ask a question. If these immigration officials or law enforcement officers who do these raids find people who are working without permission, they arrest them, right? To initiate deportation proceedings. And what about those who employed them? Are they also being detained, also start a process against them?

ADAMARI LOPEZ, HOST, UN NUEVO DIA: They get fined.

RASHEL DIAZ, HOST, UN NUEVO DIA: They get fined somehow, a penalty, so to speak.

DANIEL SARCOS, HOST, UN NUEVO DIA: Ah! Okay.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/latino/...ntration-camps

This is great news! WAY TO GO SHERIFF JOE!! Thank you Federal Appeals Court! Thank you very very much!!

Sheriff Joe...head of Border Patrol.