Ariz. sheriff temporarily suspends immigration efforts

JJ Hensley | The Arizona Republic

PHOENIX — 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 are expected to 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 told The Associated Press.

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 ramifications of last week's landmark federal-court decision have started to appear in the day-to-day operations at the Sheriff's Office, but experts said the ruling will likely have a broader impact on other police departments around the country that relied on the same legal advice as MCSO to pursue similar immigration-enforcement policing methods.

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 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 combatting the nation's border woes a central part of his political identity.

Kevin Johnson, dean of the law school at the University of California-Davis, said the judge's ruling that Arpaio's office engaged in racial profiling has put other police departments that followed the guidance of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach on notice that their methods are flawed.

Johnson said that U.S. District Judge Murray Snow's ruling Friday was a clear rebuke of the way sheriff's deputies had been trained and called into question Kobach's legal interpretation that local police have inherent authority to be involved in immigration enforcement, which MCSO and other agencies had relied on.

"It seems to me that police departments across the country are on notice that maybe Kris Kobach is not the best person you want to put together a program that is going to withstand legal scrutiny," Johnson said.

But Kobach, a professor of law and an architect of Arizona's immigration-enforcement law known as Senate Bill 1070, defended his interpretation of federal law.

And he said it was Snow's analysis of the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures, that was flawed and inconsistent with legal precedent.

"The judge has written his opinion in a way that doesn't respect the inherent authority of local law enforcement," Kobach said.

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.

Part of the controversy over the program came from the use of traffic stops to engage in immigration enforcement. The relatively routine stops for minor traffic violations gave deputies an opening to come into contact with drivers and passengers. If the deputies became suspicious that vehicle occupants were in the country without authorization, based on factors like language, appearance and ethnicity, the deputies could ask their immigration status.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio's immigration-enforcement program was, in his words, a "pure program … you go after illegals."

Those words came back to bite Arpaio in Snow's 142-page ruling that settled long-standing racial-profiling allegations against the Sheriff's Office in favor of a group of citizens that grew to include every Latino stopped by deputies since 2007.

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."

Tim Casey, Arpaio's lead attorney, said the decision against Arpaio's office is historic in the world of immigration law. "It will invariably impact individual rights and law enforcement operations throughout the United States," Casey said. "It's going to be cited and relied upon for many others for a long time."

Contributing: The Associated Press