MARICOPA COUNTY NOW HAS NATION’S HIGHEST NUMBER OF IMMIGRATION HOLDS ON INCARCERATED ILLEGAL ALIENS

Phoenix, AZ - While the Sheriff’s illegal immigration and human smuggling operations conducted on the streets and roadways here have netted nearly 2300 arrests, another very successful effort to locate illegal aliens has been quietly happening inside Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s jails.

Despite the growing criticism of the Sheriff’s illegal immigration fight by some valley politicians and activists, Sheriff Arpaio says 60 detention officers trained by ICE officials have conducted over 106,000 interviews and investigations of inmates booked into jail since April of 2007.

In those 18 months, 16,000 inmates were determined to be illegal aliens. Either they have already been deported or will be deported after being tried and/or serving their sentences for crimes committed in the valley.

The work being done be Arpaio’s detention staff is a likely contributor to the recent reduction in crime in the valley.

That number of 16,000 represents a full one third (1/3) of all inmates in the United States who have had holds placed on them after being identified by jail or prison officials as illegal aliens.

“No other jail system in the United States has done a better job of identifying incarcerated illegal aliens. This effort ultimately makes these particular inmates subject to deportation rather than returning them to the streets,â€