Sheriff Joe Arpaio announces 'crime-suppression operation'
Sheriff Joe Arpaio announces 'crime-suppression operation' for Phoenix
by JJ Hensley - Apr. 28, 2010 11:29 AM
The Arizona Republic .
Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced another illegal-immigration enforcement operation for this weekend in Phoenix, marking Arpaio's 15th concerted effort to root out illegal immigrants but the first since Gov. Jan Brewer signed a controversial new immigration-enforcement law last week.
Arpaio has been talking about bringing another "crime-suppression operation" to Phoenix for a month, and the new legislation that obligates local police to ask suspects about immigration status won't go into effect for several months, but the convergence of the two events means Arpaio's weekend effort likely will receive a bigger spotlight.
Arpaio has said investigators will center the operation in Phoenix neighborhoods that have become havens for drophouses, where human smugglers drop off their cargo and can hold the captives for ransom until relatives pay or law enforcement intervenes.
Arpaio's deputies have conducted the crime-suppression operations for more than two years, and the efforts are the target of frequent criticism from opponents who claim sheriff's deputies target Hispanics for minor violations in an effort to find illegal immigrants.
Critics of Arizona's new legislation claim the law, which makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally and requires local police to enforce federal immigration laws, will encourage similar behavior from other law-enforcement agencies, some of which have steered clear of asking about immigration status but could now be obligated to due to a provision that allows citizens to sue police agencies that fail to investigate suspected illegal immigrants.
Arpaio's efforts have been met with frequent protests and resulted in a lawsuit making its way through federal court in which five Latino defendants claim sheriff's deputies engaged in selective enforcement as an excuse to ask about their immigration status.
The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office is also the subject of a Department of Justice civil-rights investigation into allegations that the agency targets suspects based on race.
Arpaio has said the allegations of racial-profiling are untrue, and that his deputies are just as likely to stop a White driver for minor traffic violations during a "crime-suppression operation" as they are to stop a minority driver.
Thousands of records the Sheriff's Office has recently started to produce in the racial-profiling lawsuit, which is more than 2 years old, could contain information on the ethnicity of drivers deputies stopped during the operations and which of those drivers were cited.
http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoe ... 28-ON.html
