4
U.S. Congress Members Call for
Investigation of Arpaio
PHOENIX (By Daniel Gonzαlez, Arizona
Republic) February 14, 2009 Four
leading Democratic members of the U.S.
House Judiciary Committee on Friday
asked the new attorney general and
Homeland Security secretary to
investigate civil-rights complaints
stemming from Maricopa County Sheriff
Joe Arpaio's crackdowns on illegal
immigration.
The four lawmakers called on Attorney
General Eric Holder and Homeland
Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to
investigate complaints that deputies
used skin color as the basis to search
for illegal immigrants. They also asked
that a federal agreement allowing the
Maricopa County Sheriff's Office to
enforce immigration laws be terminated
if any problems can't be fixed.
The lawmakers are the highest-level
officials, and the first under the new
Obama administration and
Democratic-controlled Congress, to make
such a request. They are committee
Chairman John Conyers Jr. of Michigan,
Zoe Lofgren of California, Jerrold
Nadler of New York and Robert Scott of
Virginia.
Last year, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon,
along with civil-liberties and
immigrant-advocacy groups, called for
similar investigations of Arpaio.
The sheriff on Friday adamantly denied
his deputies use racial profiling in
arrests of illegal immigrants. "We're
doing the right thing," he said. "If I
was worried, with all the allegations,
why would I keep doing it? I'm not
stupid, having worked for the feds for
30 years."
The lawmakers' request, in the form of a
letter, comes a few weeks after
Napolitano ordered the Department of
Homeland Security to conduct a
wide-ranging review of immigration
enforcement and border security. That
includes a review of the federal
program, known as 287(g), that gives
state and local agencies the authority
to enforce immigration laws.
In a memo, Napolitano ordered her staff
to study the effectiveness of allowing
police to arrest illegal immigrants vs.
allowing jailers to identify and hold
them when they are arrested for crimes.
She also wrote that she wants to see
what can be done to speed the process
for signing more 287(g) agreements.
Arpaio said this week that he is worried
the former Arizona governor will
eliminate the provision that allows
local police to arrest illegal
immigrants.
Legal experts have said Arpaio's
practices were likely to get more
scrutiny under the Obama administration.
Holder has a track record of
investigating allegations of racial
profiling against police departments
when he was deputy attorney general
under the Clinton administration. As
governor, Napolitano yanked state
funding that helped pay for Arpaio's
controversial neighborhood sweeps, which
critics said were aimed at arresting
illegal immigrants.
In Friday's letter, Conyers and the
other Democrats said that, in recent
months, Arpaio had shown "a blatant
disregard for the rights of Hispanic
residents in the Phoenix area."
Lofgren is chairwoman of the immigration
subcommittee. Nadler is chairman of the
Constitution subcommittee, and Scott is
chairman of the crime subcommittee.
The lawmakers wrote that Arpaio had
apparently overreached his authority
under the federal agreement by ordering
deputies to "scour Latino neighborhoods"
to search for illegal immigrants on the
basis of skin color.
"As a result, members of the Latino
community - whether they are U.S.
citizens or foreign-born, whether they
are legal immigrants or undocumented -
feel under siege," the letter said.
Arpaio's office has conducted
neighborhood sweeps over the past 18
months that resulted in the arrests of
at least 1,476 illegal immigrants for
federal immigration violations. In
addition, detention officers trained to
check the immigration status of every
inmate booked into jail have turned over
21,472 illegal immigrants to federal
authorities for deportation.
The Democrats said an incident this
month in which Arpaio, citing a need to
cut costs, "paraded approximately 200
suspected illegal immigrants in shackles
to a segregated area of his Tent City
county facility" also warranted
investigation.
Arpaio denied his policies are
discriminatory toward Latinos and called
the 287(g) program "a great success."
"We've done a great job when you look at
all the arrests we've made and all the
(illegal immigrants) we've found who
have been booked into the jail," he
said.
Arpaio compared the House members'
request to similar ones made in the past
year by Gordon and advocacy groups. None
resulted in a federal investigation.
Vincent Picard, a spokesman for the
Phoenix office of U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, said Arpaio has not
violated the 287(g) agreement. The pact
prohibits ICE-trained deputies from
targeting illegal-immigrant suspects
based on race or appearance.
Although allegations of racial profiling
are common, not a single firsthand
complaint involving ICE-trained officers
in Arizona has been filed with the
Department of Homeland Security's Office
of Inspector General or any other
investigative agency, Picard said.
Some legal immigrants have been detained
under the program, he said, but in every
case, ICE determined they weren't
carrying their green cards as required.
"Arizona's 287(g) program is working as
intended," Picard said.
Conyers has come under fire from some
Democratic lawmakers for pushing too
hard for investigations of the Bush
administration. Last year, Conyers
threatened to file articles of
impeachment against President George W.
Bush that alleged constitutional
violations of civil liberties. But he
was discouraged by the Democratic Party
leadership.
Rep. Trent Franks, a Republican and the
only Arizona member of the House
Judiciary Committee, was traveling
Friday night and could not be reached
for comment.
The Justice Department will review the
letter, spokeswoman Laura Sweeney said.
Napolitano has asked for a review of the
287(g) program because of questions
about how agreements with state and
local agencies are administered and if
uniform standards are being applied,
said Dean Smith, a Homeland Security
spokesman. The review is due next
Friday.
