Phoenix Copwatch Media
The Arrests Must Stop
June 16, 2006
This is the text of the flier that Phoenix Copwatch distributed at the protest in front of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office on June 16, 2006.
Over 200 people have been arrested in the process of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's backwards enforcement of an anti-human smuggling law in the last few months. With the full support of County Attorney Andrew Thomas, Sheriff Joe has locked up suspected undocumented immigrants for the fabricated “crime” of conspiring to smuggle themselves into the country.
They say that they are enforcing Arizona’s new anti-smuggling law, but even the co-sponsors of that law say that Thomas and Arpaio are misinterpreting it and are overstepping their authority. While the law authorizes the arrest of human smugglers, enforcement of immigration laws is supposed to be the responsibility of federal agencies. But politicians who have it out for immigrants seem to have found an exploitable loop-hole that allows them to harass and detain hundreds of people whom they suspect of coming to this country through improper channels. It’s obvious that this is simply a political game for Sheriff Joe and Andrew Thomas, and not a real attempt at entering America’s much-needed dialogue about immigration.
Reasonable law enforcement agencies around the country, including the LAPD and Phoenix PD, understand that local police have no business enforcing immigration laws – by definition, a federal issue. Local enforcement of immigration will only lead to a chilling effect among immigrant communities, making people less likely to report crimes or ask for help from the police. Do we really want to keep a woman from calling the cops on her abusive husband because she’s afraid she will be deported?
Now Sheriff Joe is sending armed civilian volunteers out into the desert and the streets of Phoenix to hunt down suspected migrants. His "posse", in charge of Illegal Immigrant Interdiction detail, has far less training than police officers, and unlike the Border Patrol, almost no training in the complexities of immigration law. Phoenix Copwatch is very concerned that this move will only inflame an already volatile situation and will inevitably lead to racial profiling by over-zealous armed civilians. In fact, one member of Sheriff Joe's posse has an online blog on which violent hate speech against immigrants has remained for 10 months. (For more info: Google search “Tarantulas & MCSO,” or go to http://arizona.indymedia.org/news/2006/06/44033.php).
- We demand:
1. That Andrew Thomas and Sheriff Arpaio stop misinterpreting Arizona’s anti-smuggling law to arrest and prosecute suspected undocumented migrants as smuggling “conspirators”
2. That all persons arrested for “conspiring to smuggle” themselves be immediately released from custody
3. That Sheriff Joe stop using poorly trained armed civilian volunteers to hunt for migrants