Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio Takes on the Justice Department

By Seth Hoy, Immigration Impact. Posted June 10, 2009.

Anti-immigrant media glutton, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, doesn’t stay out of the headlines for very long. In March, the menacing Sheriff Arpaio, known for transforming Arizona’s Maricopa County Police Department into an immigration-enforcement agency, made headlines when he became the focus of a Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation for “allegations of discriminatory practices based on a person’s national origin and unconstitutional searches and seizures.”

The federal investigation, a result of racial profiling allegations, only makes this latest headline all the more ironic—Sheriff Arpaio now says the Department of Justice is not playing fair in its investigation.

In a letter from Arpaio’s lawyer, Robert Driscoll, to Department of Justice investigators, Arpaio claims that the Department of Justice improperly shared documents with the Department of Homeland Security, which is now scrutinizing Arpaio’s use of federal immigration authority.

“They are not playing fair,” Arpaio said last Tuesday. “There is a political motive behind all of this — and ethical violations. Right now, I’m fighting back.”

Really? Fair? Ethical? What’s fair or ethical about the pulling over Latino-looking U.S. citizens to check their immigration status? What’s fair or ethical about rounding up immigrant detainees, shackling them and forcing them to publically march to a segregated tent city surrounded by an electric fence? What’s fair or ethical about forcing immigrant detainees to wear pink underwear in order to humiliate them?

See more stories tagged with: immigration, arpaio

Seth Hoy is a writer at Immigration Impact.

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