Gage Skidmore
Joe Arpaio speaking at the Tea Party Patriots American Policy Summit in Phoenix, Arizona, February 2011.
Update 8.25.17: President Donald Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio, calling him "an American patriot" who "kept Arizona safe!"
Update 8.22.17: Arpaio was convicted in July of criminal contempt and faces sentencing in October.
Possibly no sheriff since Wyatt Earp has enjoyed a reputation as fierce as Arizona’s Joe Arpaio.
Arpaio’s infamy, honed over his twenty-four years as Maricopa County Sheriff, owes to such acts as his establishment of “Tent City,” an open-air detainment facility where inmates lived in 125 degrees F. and were forced to wear pink underwear. Jail prisoners also endured chain gangs, meal deprivation and other humiliations Arpaio publicized as deterrents to crime.
Now the tables seem to have turned. Arpaio lost his bid for reelection last fall, in the same election that made a President out of Donald Trump. His successor, Democrat Paul Penzone, is dismantling the tent complex. And Arpaio is now on trial for criminal charges over his failure to follow court orders barring his office from enforcing federal immigration laws.
During Arpaio’s tenure as sheriff, he cost taxpayers $142 million to defend him against lawsuits brought by county jail inmates or their families, alleging recurring and sometimes fatal abuse. His office was also flagged for failing to adequately investigate more than 400 sex-crimes cases, and dozens of allegations of child molestation.
Arpaio’s strongman reputation, and the basis for his ultimate downfall, grew out of his immigration “sweeps.” These were planned raids by his office of well-established Latino businesses and neighborhoods, targeting workers who had traffic violations, or who had used fake ID cards to get jobs. His office arrested and deported hundreds of people, ripping apart families, upsetting local economies, undermining workers’ rights, and terrorizing Phoenix’s Latino communities.
Arpaio’s strongman reputation, and the basis for his ultimate downfall, grew out of his immigration “sweeps.”
In 2008, the American Civil Liberties Union joined local immigrant right groups in suing Arpaio for racial profiling and unlawful traffic stops of Latinos. Steve Kilar, a spokesman with the ACLU of Arizona, tells The Progressive, “The court determined that’s what they were doing, and in 2011 federal Judge Murray Snow ruled that Arpaio had to stop targeting Latinos for immigration, that his job is state laws—not immigration laws.”
But the Maricopa County sheriff continued to target Latino residents and to detain immigrants for deportation. In 2013, Judge Snow issued an order mandating changes by Arpaio and his agency to prevent continued misconduct. In a May 2016 civil trial, the federal court found Arpaio and his top deputies in contempt for repeatedly violating court orders and referred the case to the Department of Justice. Arpaio has acknowledged defying the judge’s order to desist from racial profiling via his immigration patrols, but argued that these orders were unclear.
Arpaio’s trial, was described by the Arizona Republic as “legal tug of war,” with the defense arguing that the former sheriff failed to follow the judge’s orders because he got bad legal advice. But Kilar says “many of these issues were hashed out in the civil contempt trial,” which Arpaio lost. “During the civil trial in 2012, it was shown that he was targeting Latinos. We saw justice served.”
Christine Neumann-Ortiz, director of the Wisconsin-based Voces de la Frontera, is well acquainted with tough-guy sheriffs. Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke is celebrated in right wing circles for his anti-immigrant position and his dismissal of Black Lives Matter and other civil rights advocates. The county jail under his jurisdiction is also under investigation for abuse and deaths of inmates, including the recent death of a mentally ill man denied water for a week.
Gage Skidmore
Another tough-guy sheriff, Milwaukee County's David Clarke.
“For us, [Arpaio’s trial] offers a lesson of what is going to happen to Clarke,” Neumann-Ortiz tells The Progressive. “He is also abusing his position to mistreat citizens and undocumented immigrants. He threatens people, leading to a culture of abuse and disregard for human rights.”
Neumann-Ortiz decries Clarke’s support for agreements that give cooperating local law-enforcement de facto federal immigration power to jail arrest people suspected of being undocumented and jailing them on immigration detainers.
“What’s happened with Arpaio shows the failure of those policies,” says Neumann-Ortiz. “They lead to discrimination, where abuses don’t get investigated and local economies are hurt.”
“What’s happened with Arpaio shows the failure of those [anti-immigrant] policies. They lead to discrimination, where abuses don’t get investigated and local economies are hurt.”
But even with the tough anti-immigration postures taken by Arpaio and Clarke, and by the Trump Administration, Neumann-Ortiz is seeing a new invigoration among people supportive of immigrant rights.
“Faith groups are stepping up, thirty-eight sheriffs have come out publicly saying don’t want to play the role of immigration agents,” she says. “Having done this work for a decade now, I’ve been through so many battles against this effort to criminalize immigrants, and through that struggle we are seeing some progress.”
The Arizona sheriff’s trial is expected to conclude by the end of next week. If convicted, he face up to six months in jail, an outcome considered unlikely given that he is over eighty and might receive a pardon from his friend President Trump.