An Arizona sheriff who led the way for local police across the country to take up immigration enforcement is reconsidering his crackdowns — and other law enforcement officials who followed his lead may eventually back away, too.
Joe Arpaio, the sheriff for metropolitan Phoenix, has temporarily suspended all his immigration efforts after a federal judge concluded two weeks ago that the sheriff’s office had racially profiled Latinos in its patrols, Arpaio spokesman Brandon Jones said.
Arpaio critics, including the federal government, are gaining ground in their fight to get the sheriff out of immigration enforcement. Even before the ruling, Washington had stripped Arpaio’s office of its special federal immigration arrest powers and started to phase out the program across the country amid complaints that it led to abuses by local officers. The Arpaio ruling is expected to impact state immigration laws in Arizona, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, where local officers question people’s immigration status in certain instances.
The national mood on immigration also has changed. Fewer states are seeking their own immigration laws, and support has grown for Congress to overhaul the nation’s immigration system.
Peter Spiro, a Temple University law professor who specializes in immigration law, said the May 24 ruling marks a big blow for Arpaio and the movement for more local immigration enforcement. “It’s a cautionary tale for any other would-be Joe Arpaios out there,” Spiro said. “This is an example that others can hardly afford to ignore.”
The temporary suspension of Arpaio’s immigration enforcement efforts marked the first pause since the lawman launched his crackdowns more than seven years ago and made battling the nation’s border woes a central part of his political identity.
His immigration work will remain on hold until at least June 14, when lawyers will attend a hearing and discuss possible remedies to the constitutional violations found by U.S. District Judge Murray Snow. It’s not known whether Arpaio will resume immigration enforcement after the hearing. The ruling doesn’t altogether bar Arpaio from enforcing the state’s immigration laws, but imposes a long list of restrictions on his immigration patrols, such as a prohibition on using race as a factor in deciding whether to stop a vehicle with a Latino occupant.
The sheriff won’t face jail time or fines as a result of the ruling. But lawyers opposing the sheriff are expected to seek more training for officers, better record-keeping of arrests and a court-appointed official to monitor the agency’s operations to make sure the sheriff’s office isn’t making unconstitutional arrests.
“We are out of the immigration business until that hearing,” Jones said. “Until that hearing, better safe than sorry.”
After Arpaio lost his federal immigration arrest powers in October 2009, he cited state immigration laws as he continued to carry out enforcement efforts.
It has been almost two years since Arpaio conducted his last signature sweep, in which deputies flood an area of a city — in some cases, heavily Latino areas — over several days to seek out traffic violators and arrest other offenders.
Jessica M. Vaughan, a local immigration enforcement expert for the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for stricter immigration laws, disputed the notion that Arpaio’s racial profiling ruling will have a chilling effect on local immigration efforts.
Vaughan said the prevailing view within local agencies is that it’s their responsibility to work with the federal government on immigration. “They would be derelict in their duty if they did not,” Vaughan said.
In an interview earlier this week, Arpaio said he was surprised by Snow’s ruling, but declined to talk about the decision’s effects on his immigration enforcement. “I respect the courts, but they have a job to do. We have a job to do,” Arpaio said. “The federal justice system also gives you the opportunity to appeal.”
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