August 18, 2009
Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio vs. Obama’s Emerging Stealth Amnesty

When small town mayors like Lou Barletta and big county Sheriffs like Joe Arpaio become national figures by sticking to their guns, it will embolden other local officials to crack down.
Joe Arpaio—the 77 year old sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona—bills himself as the toughest sheriff in America.I don’t know that he’s the toughest, but he certainly endured morefrom the Treason Lobby than any law enforcement officer in the country. And, as the Obama administration institutesa “stealth amnesty”by quietly dismantling even the minimal protections against illegal immigration surviving from the lame-duck Bush administration, Sheriff Joe is undeniably emerging as a true American hero.
Since Arpaio began detaining illegal aliens in 2005, the usual Treason Lobby suspects—La Raza, the ADL, the ACLU, Amnesty International, MALDEF, and their media parrots—have used every trick in the book. He’s faced lawsuits, recall petitions, media exposés, and protests. But he always comes off stronger and more popular in the end.
What has Arpaio done to deserve this hostility? He enforces the law. In 2005, Arizona passed a law making human smuggling a felony. Sheriff Joe takes this law seriously and arrests the smugglers—and, naturally, charges the illegal aliens who are conspiring with the coyotes with conspiracy. Arpaio has also entered a 287 (g) agreement with the Department of Homeland Security that allows local law enforcement officers to detain illegal aliens during the course of their normal law enforcement activities.
Arpaio does not indiscriminately harass Hispanics. But his deputies go to suspected drop houses for illegal aliens and pull over vans and trucks overfilledwith foreigners. His department explicitly bars pulling over suspects based on ethnicity, but they do use common sense tactics like scrutinizing those who do not have any documents and cannot speak English.
The Arizona Republic came out with an analysis showing that 68% of those arrested in his sweeps had Hispanic surnames—presumably evidence of racial profiling. [Feds give sheriff a tough choice on immigration enforcement, by JJ Hensley, August 5, 2009] The story failed to mention that Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 78% of illegal aliens come from Latin American countries, and it’s a safe bet that the number is even higher in Maricopa County.
Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio vs. Obama’s Emerging Stealth Amnesty
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