Changing goals mark sheriff's immigration effort
July 12th, 2008 @ 1:08pm
by Associated Press

MESA, Ariz. - When Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio first started to focus on illegal immigration in 2005, he was adamant that he wanted to get the big fish.

But despite millions of dollars to fund a growing squad of detectives focused on human smuggling and tens of thousands of man hours, only low-level participants in human smuggling rings have been arrested: drop house guards, drivers and the immigrants they ferry.

Those were just the people Arpaio said he wasn't targeting when he first targeted the problem.

``I don't expect to concentrate on some guy in a truck with six illegals,'' Arpaio told The Associated Press in 2005. ``I want to go after the professional smugglers who do this for money, the top people.''

Instead, an East Valley Tribune review of sheriff's records found the vast majority of arrests have involved average people trying to get into the country to get a job.

In 2006 and 2007, the first two years the sheriff's office did immigration enforcement, deputies arrested 578 illegal immigrants using traffic stops, most of them men in their 20s and 30s from central Mexico.

Of those, 498 faced only a single charge for paying a smuggler, records show. Deputies found just one firearm during the stops, and made only seven drug arrests.

And Arpaio's human smuggling unit, which has grown to 18 members, has yet to arrest a single boss.

In the past year, Arpaio has changed his focus and is now concentrating on day laborers and ordinary people living in the U.S. illegally, sending his teams into cities he doesn't patrol, such as Phoenix, Mesa and Guadalupe.
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