[Bret L]

((Arpaio's a hard-on. But he's OUR hard-on. Bret. ))


Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio vs. Obama’s Emerging Stealth Amnesty

By Ellison Lodge

"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 more from the Treason Lobby than any law enforcement officer in the country. And, as the Obama administration institutes a "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 overfilled with 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.

Just one example of a typical anti-Arpaio stunt took place on Friday
DATE. Salvador Reza and the group "Puente [= bridge] AZ" held a
"Children’s March for Family Unity". Fifty Latino kids dressed in
butterfly outfits (butterflies migrate over borders...get it?) waiving
American flags, and holding signs like "Don’t take away my parents,
Joe".

Of course, we can have "family unity" while enforcing our laws. No one
is stopping the illegal alien children and anchor babies from going
back to Mexico with their parents.

But the Treason Lobby doesn’t care about keeping together families.
They are too valuable for propaganda purposes in the United States—as
when immigration enthusiasts paraded Elvira Arellano’s son around the
country to campaign for amnesty after his mother’s deportation.

This Salvador Reza, who organized the march, is also responsible for
much of the anti-Arpaio hijinks. Some patriotic immigration reformers
claim he supports Reconquista. But it’s actually worse. Not only does
he refuse to recognize the sovereignty of the United States, he
doesn’t even recognize the sovereignty of any country in North or
South America. In fact—contrary to the flag-waving kids—he doesn’t
even like the word America, saying, "I called it "America" because
that is the common term, but in reality it is ‘Abya Yala’, which is
the name of our Continent."

Reza thinks amnesty advocates are too short sighted because "in
reality we are struggling for the freedom to travel throughout our
mother The Earth without having barriers" just like the migrating
Indians supposedly did before "some sick minds invented nationalism".

Of course this doesn’t get covered in the Main Stream Media. NPR
refers to him as a "Community Organizer Fight[ing] for Immigrant
Rights". In contrast, the fact that a few opponents of Reza have un-PC
cartoons of Obama is worth its own story.

In fact, just on August 12, Phil Gordon, [Email him] the Mayor of
Phoenix—which is part of Maricopa County—invited the Anti-Defamation
League and the Southern Poverty Law Center (known to VDARE.COM as the
"$PLC") to talk about combating the many "hate groups in the state".
FAIR president Dan Stein, whose unimpeachably herbivorous Beltway
patriotic immigration reform group has been nevertheless named a "hate
group" by the SPLC, sent a letter asking for a representative to
merely attend the meetings, but was rebuffed. At the meetings, the
lovely Heidi Beirich warned the audience of the dangerous "links" that
Arpaio supposedly had to "nativist extremist" groups.

Following an earlier anti-Arpaio march just in May, The New York Times
editorialized that the sheriff’s faces more forceful opposition from a
"a dogged organizer, Salvador Reza" than from the U.S. government.

But in reality, propaganda stunts involving a few illegal alien
children in butterfly outfits are nowhere near as big of a threat to
Arpaio as the Obama Administration.

In March, the Obama Department of Justice sent a letter to Arpaio
announcing that its civil rights division is investigating his office
for "national origin discrimination, including failure to provide
meaningful access to MCSO services for limited English proficient
individuals" But Arpaio refused to play his role in this show trial
and announced at a press conference that his department would not
cooperate with the investigation.

And now the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement [ICE] is after Arpaio
for enforcing immigration laws. On July 10, Homeland Security
Secretary Janet Napolitano revised the 287 (g) agreement with state
and local government to require them to release all illegal aliens not
charged with serious crimes "to address concerns that individuals may
be arrested for minor offenses as a guise to initiate removal
proceedings".[Napolitano weakens illegal immigration rule enforcement]

Arpaio vowed to continue enforcing the law, saying, "If I’m told not
to enforce immigration law except if the alien is a violent criminal,
my answer to that is we are still going to do the same thing, 287 (g)
or not". Worst case scenario, he would continue to detain illegals
under Arizona’s existing state law against smuggling.

DHS gave Arpaio 90 days to continue with the old policy. But on July
23 and 24th it ordered him to release 13 illegal aliens who were
caught in a broad sweep. When he told the public of this outrage, it
threatened to completely revoke the 287 (g) agreement if he did not
"coordinate with ICE regarding information to be released to the media
regarding actions taken under this memorandum of agreement".

In other words: shut up—or we’ll make you release violent illegal
aliens back on the street. [ICE gags sheriff, Washington Times, August
5, 2009]

The Feds claimed that Arpaio ordered the release to get PR, but,
anticipating their lies, he had taped their orders.

I have heard a few in the patriotic immigration reform movement
complain that Joe Arpaio more interested in publicity than
immigration. They believe that by applying the laws as broadly as
possible while constantly attacking the federal authorities, he’s in
part responsible for the now-watered-down 287 (g) guidelines.

No one can deny that Arpaio enjoys getting headlines. And it’s
possible that he might arrest a few less illegal aliens because of his
feud with the Feds. But by letting illegals know they’re not welcome
in his county, he no doubt causes many more to self-deport.

Keeping the 287 (g) program alive is important. But it is not going to
solve the illegal immigration crisis in this country by itself. Most
illegal aliens are not rapists, murderers, or thieves. This does not
mean, however, that they are not here illegally, nor that they do not
impose enormous fiscal and social costs upon American citizens.

What will solve the problem is when Americans wake up to the fact that
not only have the Bush and now the Obama administration refused to
enforce our immigration laws, but they persecute our law enforcement
officers who do—and then do something about this continuing scandal.

Sheriff Joe sends a message to patriotic Americans (and potentially
patriotic politicians) across the country: if you stand up against the
Treason Lobby, the American people will stand with you. Despite
attacks by the media, ethnic pressure groups and government he always
polls highly.

At her panel on "hate groups", the flustered Heidi Beirich concluded
her remarks on Arpaio by lamenting, "I don't know why it is that he
keeps getting re-elected, I just don't know."

Here’s a hint: the most recent poll showed that 57% of Arizona voters
believe that Arpaio improves the image of the state, while only 27%
thinks it reflects poorly.

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.

At 77, Arpaio is pretty old to start a national political career
(although he’s two years younger than the appalling Arlen Specter).
But I wouldn’t mind seeing him kick out the SPLC-groveling mayor of
Phoenix, or Congressman Jeff Flake, or even a certain Arizona Senator
who cosponsored an amnesty bill a couple of years ago back and is up
for re-election in 2010.

OK, Sheriff Joe might love publicity—but the fact that the Obama
administration sides with illegal aliens over a sheriff who just want
to enforce the law is something that needs to be publicized."

http://www.vdare.com/misc/090816_lodge.htm