Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine Calls on Fans to Turn the Tide Against Hate, Join him in Phoenix, Arizona.

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Press Release from The National Day Laborer Organizing Network

Famous Lead Singer to Join National Organizations to Denounce Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Out of Control Intimidation and Humiliation

Press Conference

Who:

National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), order Puente Arizona, and and Somos America

What:

Press Conference to Announce National March Against Sheriff Arpaio’s abuses

Where:
Sidewalk in front of Sheriff Arpaio’s Headquarters.

100 West Washington, Phoenix Arizona

When:
Tuesday, February 24. 11:00am.

“Recently the nation witnessed the humiliation of migrants in a spectacle evocative of the most horrific episodes of human history,” explains Pablo Alvarado, Director of NDLON.  “People across the country are outraged by the human rights violations in Maricopa County and they are being moved to action.”

In the last month Sheriff Joe Arpaio intensified his on-going attacks against Latinos by segregating the county jail and parading undocumented migrants shackled in a chain-gang into a “tent city.”

Zack de la Rocha responded to the news by saying, “To witness what is happening in Arizona and remain neutral is to be implicated in human rights violations that are occurring right here on US soil. History will not be kind to Joe Arpaio.   He will be remembered with other sheriffs like Bull Connor who subjugated and terrorized communities for shortsighted political gain.  I hope everyone will join me in protesting Sheriff Joe this Saturday.”

National organizations and others will hold an emergency convening this Friday and march in Phoenix, Saturday, February 28th, starting at 9:00am at Steele Indian School Park to call on Secretary Napolitano to revoke Sheriff Arpaio’s 287g agreement and call for an end to the raids.

More details can be found at www.ndlon.org.

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The Unconscionable Idiot of the Week Award Goes To…

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Saly Kohn
Huffington Post
Feb 5 2009

Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona! Congratulations!

This week, having already done everything imaginable to turn himself into a national right-wing celebrity by terrorizing undocumented immigrants, Sheriff Joe turned to the unimaginable. For a pre-arranged media circus, he paraded — that’s right, paraded — undocumented immigrants wearing humiliating old-fashioned prison uniforms and shackles out of the county jail to a “tent city” where they are now being held and awaiting court. Just as Arpaio rounded up immigrants in the county through widespread racial profiling, he has carried that racism to detention by segregation — and singling out — Latino immigrants.

Arpaio claims the measure was a cost-saver, but it’s worth noting that in 2005, he moved 700 prisoners from one prison to another wearing only pink underwear and flip-flops (the prisoners were, that is, not Arpaio). Outraged Maricopa County politicians say the cost-savings are negligible and merely a red herring. “He’s trying to justify this as a ‘budget savings,’ and I’m just appalled,”said County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox. “It’s just another publicity stunt.”

Of course the idea that gross violations of human rights might possibly be justified by cost-benefit analyses (see, e.g., the death penalty) or efficiency (see, e.g., torture) has been repeatedly repudiated mathematically. Let alone the moral calculus that apparently is beyond Arpaio’s grade level.

The most noteworthy thing about the photos from the orchestrated show is that the antiquated prison costumes all say “UNSENTENCED.” According to Stephen Lemmons, over 70% of people under Arpaio’s control are all still awaiting trial. What better way to welcome immigrants to America, where everyone is supposedly innocent until proven guilty, than march them in chains to a temporary concentration camp encircled with a high-voltage fence. That will teach you to seek low-wage working picking our vegetables to feed your own family!!!

The “UNSENTENCED” labels in the midst of the “we’re doing everything to portray you as dangerous and guilty” pageantry is the ultimate irony — despite Arapaio’s best attempts, the men he is trying to dehumanize remain human, fathers, brothers, sons trying to pursue the same dreams dangled in front of generations before.

Still, hats off to Sheriff Arpaio who, while he could be spending his time pursuing fraudulent mortgage brokers or mini Madoffs, is doing his part to whip up anti-immigrant furor among those who truly have bigger problems but find scapegoating immigrants much easier than imagining a new economic paradigm of justice for all. What better way to ignore your own shackles than to shackle others. Sheriff Arpaio is a real trailblazer in the right-wing shell game of denial.

Arpaio’s America

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The New York Times
Feb. 5 2009

It has come to this: In Phoenix on Wednesday, order more than 200 men in shackles and prison stripes were marched under armed guard past agantlet of TV cameras to a tent prison encircled by an electric fence. They were inmates being sent to await deportation in a new immigrant detention camp minutes from the center of America’s fifth-largest city.

The judge, and jury and exhibitioner of this degrading spectacle was the Maricopa County sheriff, link Joe Arpaio, the publicity-obsessed star of a Fox reality show and the self-appointed scourge of illegal immigrants. Though he frequently and proudly insists that he answers to no one, except at election time, the sheriff is not an isolated rogue. As a participant in the federal policing program called 287(g), he is an official partner of the United States government in its warped crackdown on illegal immigration.

The immigration enforcement regime left by the Bush Administration is out of control. It is up to President Obama and the new secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, to rein it in and clean it up. This applies not just to off-the-rails deputies like Sheriff Arpaio, but to the federal enforcement agencies themselves.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol have been shown in recent news accounts to be botching their jobs. Border Patrol agents in California have accused supervisors of setting arrest quotas for undocumented immigrants, and a recent Migration Policy Institute study showed that a much-touted campaign of raids against criminal fugitives was a failure. It netted mostly the maids and laborers who are no reasonable person’s idea of a national threat.

The burden of action is particularly high on Ms. Napolitano, who as Arizona’s governor handled Sheriff Arpaio with a gingerly caution that looked to some of his critics and victims as calculated and timid.

Ms. Napolitano, who is known as a serious and moderate voice on immigration, recently directed her agency to review its enforcement efforts, including looking at ways to expand the 287(g) program. Sheriff Arpaio is a powerful argument for doing just the opposite.

Now that she has left Arizona politics behind, Ms. Napolitano is free to prove this is not Arpaio’s America, where the mob rules and immigrants are subject to ritual humiliation. The country should expect no less.

County to probe segregation in jails

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by Yvonne Wingett and Michael Kiefer – Feb. 7, click 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors will hold a public meeting at 2 p.m. Monday to talk about the possible legal and financial fallout of segregation in the jails by Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

In a letter sent Friday, Supervisor Max Wilson, chairman of the board, asked County Attorney Andrew Thomas to attend the meeting.

Wilson was reacting to statements Thomas made to the press about Arpaio’s new policy of separating convicted inmates who are in the country illegally from the general population. Arpaio said the policy is efficient; Thomas said it might be unconstitutional.

“If this is the case, issues of potential liability and the related financial risk to Maricopa County are clearly implicated,” Wilson wrote in his letter. “I request that you personally appear at a special meeting . . . to advise the board about the legal implications and potential financial risk to the county resulting from the Sheriff’s actions.”

A spokesman for Thomas’ office called the meeting a publicity stunt.

“He’s asking for public legal ,” Barnett Lotstein said.

Lotstein said Thomas had not yet decided whether he or someone from his office would attend the meeting.

Arpaio declined comment on the meeting but issued a statement calling Thomas a “good partner in the fight to reduce illegal immigration.”

“However, at times he and I will have to agree and disagree,” Arpaio said in the statement.

On Tuesday, Arpaio announced that he would segregate the illegal immigrants as a cost-cutting measure, saying it would make it easier to handle visits from consular officials and transport inmates after they serve their time.

On Wednesday, Arpaio marched 220 inmates from Durango Jail to Tent City.

Thomas said he disagreed with the measure on principle but has no statutory authority over Arpaio, who also is his closest political ally.

He cannot sue Arpaio over the issue because he does not have standing, Thomas said; a lawsuit would have to be filed by someone directly affected by the policy, such as an inmate.

On Thursday, Thomas cited a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision that rejected an unwritten policy of segregating prisoners by race – ostensibly to prevent gang battles – by the California Department of Corrections.

Mexico protests Tent City separation of illegals

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The Associated Press

Published: February 11, 2009

MEXICO CITY: Mexico on Tuesday criticized an Arizona sheriff’s decision to keep illegal immigrants separate from other inmates at tents in Phoenix that house prisoners.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio accompanied the immigrant inmates — along with members of the media — to Tent City from an area jail on Feb. 4. He suggested illegal immigrants were better at escaping than other criminals and that housing them separately would save money.

The Mexican Foreign Relations Department said 230 Mexican nationals were being held at Tent City.

The Mexican consul general in Phoenix has “energetically protested the undignified way in which the Mexicans were transferred to ‘Tent City,’” the department said in a statement. The department said the and transfer of prisoners should “conform to internationally recognized norms” but did not give more details about why it thought the prisoners had been mistreated.

Arpaio said Mexican officials have not expressed any discontent personally to him and that he was surprised by Tuesday’s statement. He said he was told that the Mexican officials who visited the prisoners at Tent City expressed satisfaction over conditions.

“Everything was good, so I don’t know what this is about,” Arpaio told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

Arpaio said keeping illegal immigrants in one place is convenient for consulate officials visiting foreign inmates and for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents charged with deporting the inmates after they have served sentences in county jails.

He also said that the separation involved not only illegal immigrants but also U.S. citizens who have orders to be transferred to the federal government after serving out their sentences. But he said the vast majority of those held in the separate area were illegal immigrants.

Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox has expressed concern that Arpaio could potentially be violating the immigrants’ rights by keeping them separated and would seek an opinion from the Justice Department and have staff there issue an opinion.

Alessandra Soler Meetze, executive director of the ACLU of Arizona, has said it was degrading and unnecessary to shepherd the prisoners in front of media.

The Tent City is part of a tough atmosphere that made Arpaio nationally famous. His jails also feature chain gangs and pink underwear for male inmates.