Arpaio to be investigated over alleged civil-rights violations

The U.S. Justice Department has launched a civil-rights investigation of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office after months of mounting complaints that deputies are discriminating in their enforcement of federal immigration laws.

Officials from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division notified Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Tuesday that they had begun the investigation, which will focus on whether deputies are engaging in “patterns or practices of discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures.”

An expert said it is the department’s first civil-rights probe related to immigration enforcement.

Arpaio vehemently denies that deputies are illegally profiling as part of his immigration crackdowns. He said Tuesday that he welcomes the investigation and intends to cooperate fully.

“We have nothing to hide,” he said.

Although Arpaio’s illegal-immigration crackdowns have broad public support, they also have led to calls for an examination of his tactics.

Last year, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon asked for a federal investigation of possible civil-rights abuses. Last month, four key Democratic members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee asked Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to investigate Arpaio.

The lawmakers said Arpaio had exceeded the limits of a federal program that gives local police federal immigration-enforcement powers by ordering deputies to “scour” Latino neighborhoods looking for illegal immigrants based on skin color.

Arpaio, who was easily re-elected to a fifth term in November, called the investigation politically motivated and vowed to continue to arrest illegal immigrants.

“I am not going to be intimidated by the politics and by the Justice Department,” Arpaio said. “I want the people of Arizona to know this: I will continue to enforce all the immigration laws.”

Arpaio uses the sweeps to enforce the state’s employer-sanctions and anti-smuggling laws. He also participates in a federal program that lets local officers enforce federal immigration laws. The sweeps have taken place in mostly Latino neighborhoods or near where day laborers congregate. They have sparked two racial-profiling lawsuits.

The Justice Department frequently receives racial-profiling complaints against police departments, but investigations are rare, said David Harris, a University of Pittsburgh law professor and racial-profiling expert.

“The fact that this has come to their attention and they have announced their intent to investigate is highly significant,” Harris said. “It says there is enough there to be investigated. It’s not an iffy case that (can be ignored).”

Harris said this is the first civil-rights investigation stemming from immigration enforcement. The probe could last several months.

In a two-page letter dated Tuesday, Loretta King, acting assistant attorney general, said that if the investigation uncovers violations, her office will work with Arpaio to find remedies.

But Arpaio said he will battle the Justice Department in court if he disagrees with any of the changes the department tries to impose.

In the 1990s, the department conducted similar civil-rights investigations and found patterns of police discrimination in about 20 cases, including in Los Angeles and Pittsburgh. In those cases, law-enforcement agencies agreed to significant changes aimed at preventing discrimination or face a court injunction, Harris said.

“Once the Justice Department finds violations, the threat of going to court is usually enough to encourage them to agree to change,” Harris said. Changes have included increased supervision and changing policies, Harris said.

Investigations into patterns of police discrimination are “not about punishing individual officers; they are about changing the fundamental” way an agency operates, he said.

Gordon, who met with King and Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Wodatch on Tuesday in Washington, praised the investigation.

“We should all be encouraged that our new attorney general is taking these issues seriously,” he said.

Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, the board’s lone Democrat and most vocal critic of Arpaio’s immigration policies, had planned to help deliver a petition today with 35,000 Internet signatures calling for a Justice Department investigation.

“I think they’re going to find racial profiling, which is a civil-rights abuse,” said Wilcox, who was in Washington for a National Association of Counties conference. “It’s time to put a stop to them. It may cost us millions in lawsuits.”

Board Chairman Max Wilson, one of the board’s four Republicans, said he was surprised by the investigation.

“I know there’s been some accusations made,” he said. “I don’t know if there’s any merits to them. I’ve almost had my hands full of people making accusations without people having some solid, hard evidence to back it up.”

 

DOJ Launches Investigation of Sheriff Joe Arpaio: Advocates Call for Immediate Termination of 287g Contract with DHS

Press Conference on Capitol Hill, 1 pm, March 11.

Contact:  Chris Newman, 323-717-5310, newman@ndlon.org

Date:  March 10, 2009

On March 10, Acting Assistant Attorney General Loretta King sent a letter to Sheriff Joe Arpaio announcing a Department of Justice investigation of  alleged “discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures conducted by the MCSO,” among other alleged violations of federal law.  A copy of the letter is available here.  The formal investigation follows a request by Congressman Conyers that the DOJ take action to respond to myriad complaints of racial profiling in Maricopa County.    Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon first requested a DOJ investigation nearly a year ago.   And on February 28, over 5,000 people marched four miles through Phoenix to ask the the federal government to immediately  terminate its 287g(g) contract with Joe Arpaio.

On March 11, at 1 pm,  advocates from across the country and civil rights leaders will join elected officials, including Congressman Conyers and Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox,  to discuss the investigation in a press conference on Capitol Hill.

“We are very hopeful a Department of Justice investigation will vindicate the rights of people who have been terrorized by Sheriff Arpaio,” said Salvador Reza of the PUENTE movement in Phoenix, AZ.  “We also hope the Obama administration will immediately terminate the US government’s 287(g) contract with Maricopa County while the judicial process takes its course.”

“The federal government has the obligation to reform immigration laws and to uphold the Constitution,” said Pablo Alvarado, director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.  “Its failure to act has resulted in an emerging civil and human rights crisis.”

Video footage from Maricopa County is available here.

 

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Chris Newman, Esq

Legal Director

National Day Laborer Organizing Network

675 South Park View Street, Suite B

Los Angeles, CA 90057 

newman@ndlon.org

(213) 380-2785

(213) 353-1344 [fax]

www.ndlon.org

Revisions could prompt Arpaio’s ICE-program exit

Homeland Security officials will make it clear in newly written guidelines that a federal program that lets local police enforce federal immigration laws is primarily for going after immigrants who commit serious crimes.

But Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Thursday that he would likely drop out of the program if immigration officials attempt to curtail his enforcement powers, including his ability to arrest immigrants for merely being in the country illegally.

That wouldn’t be the end of Arpaio’s controversial immigration crackdowns, which have led to allegations of racial profiling. Arpaio said that even if he drops out of the federal program he will continue arresting illegal immigrants under the state’shuman smuggling law and employer sanctions laws. He said he also would turn over any suspected illegal immigrants his deputies encounter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement even if they haven’t committed any offense other than being in the country illegally.

“If the (federal) program gets too strict, then I am going to have to seriously reconsider,” Arpaio said. “But I’m still going to enforce state laws, and when we come across illegal immigrants, we are going to take action.”

ICE officials are rewriting the rules of the program, known as 287(g), in response to a federal report that found the program lacks clear goals about what kinds of criminals should be targeted. The report by the Government Accountability Office also found that the program fails to supervise local officers and does not detail what kind of crime and arrest data local agencies should be collecting.

The new rules and agreements will clarify that program participants are to focus on undocumented immigrants who commit serious crimes, such as assault, rape or murder.

“I like it the way it is now,” Arpaio said of the two-year-old agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The two-pronged agreement allows sheriff’s deputies to identify and arrest illegal immigrants they encounter on the street while investigating other crimes. It also allows jail officials to place immigration holds on inmates suspected of being in the country illegally.

“I signed up not for the jail (portion of the agreement), I signed up to enforce the laws on the street. That is where the action is,” Arpaio said.

Arpaio does not need the ICE agreement to continue his immigration raids. He has classified all of his neighborhood crime sweeps and worksite raids as an enforcement of state laws, not federal immigration laws. He says, and ICE has agreed in the past, that the agreement doesn’t apply to those raids, even though deputies cross-trained as immigration agents frequently arrest people on immigration violations during those operations.

Michael Keegan, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, declined to respond to Arpaio’s comments. He said that while the rewritten agreements will continue to allow local police trained to enforce immigration laws to arrest any illegal immigrants they encounter, the agreements will emphasize a focus on those who commit serious crimes.

Keegan said the rewritten agreements also will call for better supervision and data collection of local police enforcing immigration laws.

With 160 deputies and jail officers trained to enforce immigration laws, Arpaio is the largest participant in the rapidly growing program. His officers have arrested about 1,500 illegal immigrants under the program, and placed immigration holds on more then 22,000 inmates. Four Democratic senators have called for an investigation of Arpaio’s sweeps, concerned about accusations that deputies are unconstitutionally looking for illegal immigrants based on race and primarily target immigrants for traffic violations and other minor offenses.

DHS does not have data that shows whether the majority of immigrants arrested by Arpaio’s deputies committed serious or minor crimes but the department plans to request that data from ICE, Keegan said.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2009/03/06/20090306immig0306.html

De La Rocha Rages Against Arpaio


Rage Against The Machine and One Day As A Lion frontman Zack De La Rocha was one of the leaders of a Phoenix, check Ariz. protest against Maricopa County Sheriff (and DMX nemesis) Joe Arpaio and his enforcement of federal immigration laws against Latinos on Saturday.

“Without the proper warrants, he raids the homes and workplaces of janitors and gardeners,” De La Rocha told demonstrators at the end of the rally. “At routine traffic stops, he detains and deports mothers, violently separating them from their children, who are left abandoned.”

The controversial Arpaio was criticized after he recently invited the media to watch as he led undocumented Hispanic inmates who were shackled together by their hands and feet into the infamous Tent City prison, where detainees are forced to wear pink underwear and are subjected to Arizona’s sizzling summer heat. 

The policies and practices of the 76-year-old Arpaio, who describes himself as “America’s toughest sheriff,” have been criticized by Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Arizona Ecumenical Council, the American Jewish Committee and the Arizona chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, among others.

Arpaio’s alleged mis of prison inmates made him the target of 2,150 lawsuits in U.S. District Court and hundreds more in Maricopa County courts from 2004 through November 2007, 50 times as many prison-condition lawsuits as the New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston jail systems combined.

“I don’t know why they have to have signs calling me illiterate and a Nazi and every other name in the book,” Arpaio told the Los Angeles Times newspaper. “I’m not concerned about them or some elected officials, they all seem to be Democrats. 

“Nothing changes. They are not going to deter me.”

De La Rocha performed a free show and addressed the issue of alleged racial profiling used against Latinos the night before the protest.

Who’s Running Immigration?

NY Times
Published: March 3, price 2009

Immigration enforcement ran off the rails in the Bush era, case when federal agents stormed factories to shackle workers and local authorities staged their own crackdowns with little or no oversight from Washington. It was a war without a plan, and it solved nothing.

President Obama has repeatedly promised to take a smarter path. But if he and the homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, are making a clean break with the Bush way on immigration, we haven’t seen it yet. That shambling machinery lurches on.

Two recent examples tell the story.

The first was a large, peaceful protest in Phoenix on Saturday. Thousands stood up to the feared sheriff of Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio, who has brutally misused his powers under a program called 287(g). It enlists local police as immigration enforcers. He has terrorized Latino neighborhoods with relentless sweeps and has paraded shackled immigrants through the streets.

When she was the Arizona governor, Ms. Napolitano was an outspoken supporter of delegating neglected federal immigration duties to local authorities. Sheriff Arpaio is an example of that concept run amok. He has seldom been challenged as forcefully as he was on Saturday — not by government but by a dogged organizer, Salvador Reza, a few clergy members and politicians and thousands of people who dared to say: Enough.

The other example was the first workplace immigration raid of the Obama administration, late last month in Bellingham, Wash. More than two dozen people were arrested at a family-run company that rebuilds car engines. They were charged with the usual paperwork offenses. The company said it was blindsided, and so was Ms. Napolitano. She said she had not known about the raid in advance and promised an investigation.

Americans who might applaud any crackdown on illegal immigrants, particularly in a recession, should know that scattershot raids and rampaging sheriffs are not the answer. The idea that enforcement alone will eliminate the underground economy is a great delusion. It runs up against the impossible arithmetic of mass expulsion — no conceivable regime of raids will wrench 12 million illegal immigrants from their jobs and homes.

The country is not a safer or better place because one more business and two dozen more families are torn apart outside Seattle or because Sheriff Arpaio has much of Maricopa County terrified. The system under which illegal immigrants labor, without hope of assimilation, is not any less broken. A new report from the Government Accountability Office shows that federal oversight of the 287(g) program has been sorely lacking.

So, a question: Are Mr. Obama and Ms. Napolitano in charge or not? Let them show it by ending the raids and Sheriff Arpaio’s abuses. Something has to be done about immigration, but it has to be smarter than this.

Thousands march against Arpaio in Phoenix

Thousands march against Arpaio in Phoenix

Thousands march against Arpaio in Phoenix

The Arizona Republic

Thousands of opponents of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s illegal-immigration policies held their “March to Stop the Hate” in downtown Phoenix on Saturday..

As of 1:30 p.m., order the speeches were still being made at the march’s destination, the federal building. According to initial reports, the march was peaceful, with no major incidents as of early Saturday afternoon.

Crowd estimates from organizers and law enforcement were not immediately available, but at least one estimate put it at about 3,000.

Along the march route, between 100 and 200 Arpaio supporters gathered at the Wells Fargo Tower. Many carried “We Support Sheriff Joe” signs, among others.

The event was being led by the National Day Laborers Organizing Network and El Puente Arizona, and feature Zach de la Rocha, former lead singer of Rage Against the Machine. De la Rocha arrived at about 10:30 a.m., just before the march began at Steele Indian School Park.

Organizers marched south on Central Avenue past the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building. The route also passed Wells Fargo Tower – where Arpaio has his headquarters – and ended at the federal building on Washington Street.

Astrid Galvan and Jeffrey Javier contributed to this report.

Protesters Take On America’s Toughest Sheriff

Huffington Post

On Saturday, thousands of protesters walked the streets of Phoenix to air their displeasure with America’s toughest sheriff, whose crackdown on the city’s immigrant population has won him consistently high approval ratings from his constituents in Maricopa County.

The anger of local residents came across in one image that depicted Sheriff Joe in a white Ku Klux Klan robe. Latino protesters held signs stating, “We Are Humans,” while the most popular sign read, “Stop Racial Profiling NOW!” Supporters of the sheriff took up residence on two street corners and held signs that read, “We Support Joe,” as protesters walked by.

In mid-February, Democrats in Congress, including Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, called for an investigation into Sheriff Arpaio’s activities around immigrant arrests due to allegations of racial profiling and other civil rights abuses.

The Huffington Post received exclusive video of the protest from Amie Williams at Bal Maiden Films

Arpaio has also been denounced for using volunteer “chain gangs” and housing inmates in tent cities. These severe tactics led Fox to give Arpaio his own reality show entitled, “Smile… You’re Under Arrest!”

The backbone of Sheriff Arpaio’s vast influence stems from an agreement between the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The 287(g) provision allows federally-trained and supervised state and local law enforcement officials to investigate, apprehend, transport, and detain people who are living and working in the country without authorization. Protesters hope their demonstration will lead to further investigations into alleged crimes committed under the 287(g) provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/02/protesters-take-on-americ_n_171091.html

Report Questions Immigration Program

Published: March 3, 2009

PHOENIX — A government report questions the effectiveness of a federal program, long criticized by immigrant advocacy groups, that deputizes police officers as immigration agents.

The report, prepared by theGovernment Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, says the government has failed to determine how many of the thousands of people deported under the program were the kind of violent felons it was devised to root out.

Some law enforcement agencies had used the program to deport immigrants “who have committed minor crimes, such as carrying an open container of alcohol,” the report said, and at least four agencies referred minor traffic offenders for deportation.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has already ordered a review of the program. The report was released Wednesday before a top official at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is set to testify at a Congressional hearing in the afternoon.

Known as 287(g), a reference to the section of a 1996 law authorizing it, the program has been promoted by immigration officials as an important tool in deporting serious criminals. It has also enjoyed the strong support of some local law enforcement agencies, including here in Maricopa County, where the sheriff operates the largest program, with 160 trained deputies.

But the report said immigration bureau officials had not closely supervised how their agreements with the local agencies had been carried out, had inconsistently described the program’s goals and had failed to spell out what data should be tracked, collected and reported.

A spokesman for the Homeland Security Department, to which the immigration agency referred calls, did not respond to telephone and e-mail messages. In a response included in the report, agency officials said they had put in place changes, many of them late last year, that address the report’s findings.

The officials said the agency supported the report’s five recommendations, including clarifying the circumstances under which 287(g) authority should be used, spelling out the agency’s supervisory role and establishing ways to measure performance. The agency said it would release details in the next two months on how it would improve the program, which received $54 million from Congress this year.

The report analyzed 29 of the 67 local law enforcement agencies in the program. It found that they arrested 43,000 illegal immigrants last year, including 34,000 taken into custody by the immigration bureau.

Of the 34,000, the report said, about 41 percent were put in removal proceedings, 44 percent waived their right to a hearing and were immediately deported, and 15 percent were released for reasons including humanitarian grounds, the “minor nature of their crime” and their having been sentenced to prison.

Citing lapses in data collection, the G.A.O. was unable to determine how many of the arrested immigrants were suspected of committing serious crimes.

The 287(g) law authorizes the immigration agency to train local and state law enforcement to use its databases to determine legal status and take the first steps in deportation proceedings, but it does not specify which kinds of illegal immigrants to focus on.

The G.A.O. report said senior managers at the agency told investigators the main goal of the program was curtailing violent crimes, human smuggling, gang activity, smuggling and other high-priority offenses. But the agency, the report said, had failed to document that goal clearly in its agreements with the agencies.

Representative Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat and chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, which will hold the hearing on Wednesday, said in a statement that “the record is incomplete, at best, as to whether this program is a success.”

“Without objective data, we cannot evaluate the effectiveness of this program, nor can we determine whether better results could be achieved by other means, such as increasing the number of ICE agents,” he said.

The report did not conclude whether local agencies in the program had engaged in racial profiling, a top concern Mr. Thompson has raised before and a chief complaint in Maricopa County.

Sheriff’s deputies here have arrested thousands of illegal immigrants, many of whom were stopped for traffic violations, in sweeps that have led to lawsuits accusing the department of racial profiling.

Use of the program has accelerated in recent years as the immigration debate intensified. It has grown to 67 agencies in 23 states with more than 950 deputized officers, from 5 law enforcement agencies in 2005; there is a waiting list of 42 agencies.

Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas, who was instrumental in getting the program started in 1996, said, “Law enforcement officials believe that this voluntary program works.” He added, “Those who are serious about public safety should call for its expansion.”

The G.A.O.’s criticism largely mirrored the findings of recent analyses by independent groups, including a report last week by Justice Strategies, a nonpartisan research foundation in Brooklyn. It found, among other problems, that the program might actually strain local resources because people who have not committed a serious crime are being held on immigration charges.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/us/04immigrants.html?_r=1

Federal government takes a hard look at local police enforcement of immigration law

SF Gate.com

A federal program that deputized dozens of state and local police agencies to enforce immigration law is coming under new scrutiny in Washington, pharm where government investigators say the Department of Homeland Security has failed to properly supervise its local partners or make clear that they are to go after serious criminals, not people stopped for speeding or public urination.

The House Homeland Security Committee has scheduled a hearing on the program for Wednesday afternoon. Last summer, here the committee requested a Government Accountability Office investigation of the program, known as 287(g), and now it’s expecting to hear about those findings.

Committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said he was concerned about accusations that the policing program has led to racial profiling, the Associated Press reported.

The GAO report found that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials had not clearly explained to their local partners that the program was supposed to target smugglers and other serious offenders. Instead, state and local law enforcement agencies have been stopping people for minor infractions and turning them over to ICE, according to the AP, which obtained an advance copy of the report.

The 287(g) arrangement gained particular notoriety from Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has paraded alleged illegal immigrants in chains and striped suits through downtown Phoenix. His actions recently led four members of Congress to call for an investigation.

Last week, Justice Strategies, a research and advocacy group, released its own scathing analysis, saying the immigration partnership takes local police away from their crime fighting mission. That assessment was echoed by the liberalImmigration Policy Center. The restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies, by contrast, has celebrated the program as a way to crack down on immigrant gangs.

Meanwhile Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has called for her agency to review 287(g) among other ICE programs. The debate is sure to heat up as the findings unfold.

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

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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