Eighty demonstrators against Arizona's tough-on-illegal-immigration policies trickled out of jails here Friday

Reporting from Phoenix Eighty demonstrators against Arizona’s tough-on-illegal-immigration policies trickled out of jails here Friday, as a local sheriff continued one of his controversial operations that critics contend targets Latinos.The protesters had been arrested Thursday, the day the state’s controversial immigration law took effect and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio launched his 17th sweep against illegal immigrants.

On Friday, Arpaio announced that three illegal immigrants were arrested in the sweep. During such operations, his deputies stop people for sometimes minor violations and check their immigration status.A federal judge had barred most of the immigration law, SB 1070, from being implemented, but that didn’t stop hundreds of protesters from filling the streets and engaging in civil disobedience on Thursday. Twenty-three were arrested at Arpaio’s main downtown jail for blocking the entrance. Their demonstration forced the sheriff to delay his sweep for several hours.Activists on Friday boasted that they had slowed down the tough-talking Arpaio.”Families were not separated; the community was not terrorized,” said Carlos Garcia of civil rights group Puente, who was arrested Thursday.

Friday afternoon, several activists blocked the command center Arpaio set up for his sweep, leading to more arrests for civil disobedience. “They want to go to jail, so that’s where they’re going,” Arpaio said. “They want to keep coming, we’ll lock them up.”Also Friday, Gov. Jan Brewer said the Legislature might “tweak” SB 1070 when it convenes in January to address the federal judge’s concerns about the law.

For example, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton had singled out a provision requiring that every person arrested in the state be held until their immigration status is determined. Brewer’s lawyer had told the judge that the sentence was “inartfully” written and should apply only to suspected illegal immigrants.The law was already significantly narrowed once before in response to pressure from opponents. After Brewer signed the legislation in April, she accepted last-minute revisions from the Legislature. The law had required police to determine the immigration status of people they interact with whom they suspect are in the country illegally. Now it requires them to check only people they stop and believe are illegal immigrants. (Ap – The Los Angeles Times )

Arizona sheriff Arpaio forges ahead with aggressive immigration sweeps even after court ruling

PHOENIX Lost in the hoopla over Arizona’s immigration law is the fact that state and local authorities for years have been doing their own aggressive crackdowns in the busiest illegal gateway into the country.Nowhere in the U.S. is local enforcement more present than in metropolitan Phoenix, where Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio routinely carries out sweeps, some in Hispanic neighborhoods, to arrest illegal immigrants. The tactics have made him the undisputed poster boy for local immigration enforcement and the anger that so many authorities feel about the issue.

“It’s my job,” said Arpaio, standing beside a sheriff’s truck that has a number for an immigration hot line written on its side. “I have two state (immigration) laws that I am enforcing. It’s not federal, it’s state.”A ruling Wednesday by a federal judge put on hold parts of the new law that would have required officers to dig deeper into the fight against illegal immigration. Arizona says it was forced to act because the federal government isn’t doing its job to fight immigration.

The issue led to demonstrations across the country Thursday, including one directed at Arpaio in Phoenix in which protesters beat on the metal door of a jail and chanted, “Sheriff Joe, we are here. We will not live in fear.”Meanwhile, Gov. Jan Brewer’s lawyers went to court to overturn the judge’s ruling so they can fight back against what the Republican calls an “invasion” of illegal immigrants.

Ever since the main flow of illegal immigrants into the country shifted to Arizona a decade ago, state politicians and local police have been feeling pressure to confront the state’s border woes.In addition to Arpaio’s crackdowns, other efforts include a steady stream of busts by the state and local police of stash houses where smugglers hide illegal immigrants. The state attorney general has taken a money-wiring company to civil court on allegations that smugglers used their service to move money to Mexico. And a county south of Phoenix has its sheriff’s deputies patrol dangerous smuggling corridors.The Arizona Legislature have enacted a series of tough-on-immigration measures in recent years that culminated with the law signed by Brewer in April, catapulting the Republican to the national political stage.

But the king of local immigration enforcement is still Arpaio.Arpaio, a 78-year-old ex-federal drug agent who fashions himself as a modern-day John Wayne, launched his latest sweep Thursday afternoon, sending about 200 sheriff’s deputies and trained volunteers out across metro Phoenix to look for traffic violators who may be here illegally.

Deputy Bob Dalton and volunteer Heath Kowacz spotted a driver with a cracked windshield in a poor Phoenix neighborhood near a busy freeway. Dalton triggered the red and blue police lights and pulled over 28-year-old Alfredo Salas, who was born in Mexico but has lived in Phoenix with a resident alien card since 1993.

Dalton gave him a warning after Salas produced his license and registration and told him to get the windshield fixed.Salas, a married father of two who installs granite, told The Associated Press that he was treated well but he wondered whether he was pulled over because his truck is a Ford Lobo.

“It’s a Mexican truck so I don’t know if they saw that and said, ‘I wonder if he has papers or not,'” Salas said. “If that’s the case, it kind of gets me upset.”Sixty percent of the nearly 1,000 people arrested in the sweeps since early 2008 have been illegal immigrants. Thursday’s dragnet led to four arrests, but it wasn’t clear if any of them were illegal immigrants.Critics say deputies racially profile Hispanics. Arpaio says deputies approach people only when they have probable cause.

“Sheriff Joe Arpaio and some other folks there decided they can make a name for themselves in terms of the intensity of the efforts they’re using,” said Benjamin Johnson, executive director of the pro-immigrant Immigration Policy Center. “There’s no way to deny that. There are a lot of people getting caught up in these efforts.”The Justice Department launched an investigation of his office nearly 17 months ago over allegations of discrimination and unconstitutional searches and seizures. Although the department has declined to detail its investigation, Arpaio believes it centers on his sweeps.

Arpaio feels no reservations about continuing to push the sweeps, even after the federal government stripped his power to let 100 deputies make federal immigration arrests.Unable to make arrests under a federal statute, the sheriff instead relied on a nearly 5-year-old state law that prohibits immigrant smuggling. He has also raided 37 businesses in enforcing a state law that prohibits employers from knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.”I’m not going to brag,” Arpaio said. “Just look at the record. I’m doing what I feel is right for the people of Maricopa County.” (AP)

Arizona's immigration law Is Unconstitutional, Class Claims

PHOENIX Arizona’s controversial immigration law “will cause widespread racial profiling and will subject many persons of color … to unlawful interrogations, searches, seizures and arrests,” according to a federal class action filed by the ACLU, the NAACP and other national civil rights groups.

The new law requires local police to enforce immigration laws and allows them to search vehicles without a warrant if an officer has a reasonable suspicion that the occupants don’t have immigration papers.

The groups want the court to block Arizona Senate Bill 1070, signed by Gov. Janice Brewer on April 23, from going into effect on July 28.They say the law is unconstitutional and “will create a legal regime regulating and restricting immigration and punishing those whom Arizona deems to be in violation of immigration laws.”

The law will also “cause widespread racial profiling and will subject many persons of color — including countless U.S. citizens, and non-citizens who have federal permission to remain in the United States — to unlawful interrogations, searches, seizures and arrests,” the groups claim.

The plaintiffs include the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Immigration Law Center, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, Coalicíon De Derechos Humanos, the Muslim American Society, and the United Food and Commercial Workers International.

The Muslim American Society claims that its members, some of whom are immigrants, will be racially profiled “based on their foreign appearance and clothing, such as headscarves.” It also claims it won’t be able to educate the Muslim community in Arizona because its members “will be too afraid to attend meetings and organized activities and events.”
Jesus Cuauhtémoc Villa, a New Mexico resident and an Arizona State University anthropology student, claims that he may be subject to arrest because as a New Mexico resident he was not required to have proof of U.S. citizenship or immigration status to get a driver’s license. Villa claims he does not have a U.S. passport and does not want to risk losing his birth certificate by carrying it with him.

The plaintiffs say the Arizona immigration law “cannot be enforced without improperly singling out racial and ethnic minorities, including many U.S. citizens and persons authorized by the federal government to be present in the U.S., for stops, interrogations, arrests, and detentions.”

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio allegedly uses training materials stating that “the fact that an individual has no English skills or speaks English poorly is a factor indicating that an individual is not ‘lawfully present’ in the United States.”

The civil rights organizations demand a declaration that the Arizona immigration law is unconstitutional and an order blocking its enforcement. This is the fifth lawsuit filed against the Arizona immigration law in Federal Court.
The class is represented by Anne Lai of the ACLU Foundation of Arizona. (CN)