Just fyi – if you have an appreciation for the laws of our country and do your part to help enforce them, you miiiiight have the Department of Justice after you for violating the civil rights of the criminals. Yeah.
According to this, that’s exactly what’s happening to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona, because a bunch of congressional Democrats and liberal wackjobs (no offense to non-wackjob liberals) are worried about hurting the feelings of illegal immigrants. The Department of Justice sent the MCSO a letter, informing them that they will be investigated for ”alleged pattersn or practices of discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures, and on allegations of national origin discrimination, including failure to provide meaningful access to services for limited English proficient (LEP) individuals.”
Just so you are fully aware of where to direct your ire, the congressmen calling for the investigation include John Conyers, Jerrold Nadler, Zoe Lofgren, and Robert Scott. They are joined by National Day Laborer Organizer Network and ACORN (you know – because they’re KNOWN for following the rules) who launched petition drives and rallies in support of this investigation.
Some background: Sherriff Joe Arpaio and a bunch of his reporting officers were trained through the Dept of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Agreements of Cooperation in Communities to Enhance Safety and Security (ACCESS), which is a huge long name for an entity which helps tie federal and local law enforcement folks together to protect against illegal immigration.
Now, because Sherriff Joe is awesome, he said the following: “I will not back down. What I am doing is upholding the laws of the state of Arizona, and I will not be persuaded to turn my back on my oath of office as sheriff of this county.” Let’s be clear here. Sherriff Joe is now being investigated by our government, for engaging in the very behaviors that he was trained to engage in by our government. Now let’s talk results. This is from a 2008 press release from the MCSO (the bolding is mine):
“While the Sheriff’s illegal immigration and human smuggling operations conducted on the streets and roadways here have netted nearly 2,300 arrests, another very successful effort to locate illegal aliens has been quietly happening inside Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s jails. Despite the growing criticism of the Sheriff’s illegal immigration fight by some valley politicians and activists, Sheriff Arpaio says 60 detention officers trained by ICE officials have conducted over 106,000 interviews and investigations of inmates booked into jail since April of 2007.
“In those 18 months, 16,000 inmates were determined to be illegal aliens. Either they have already been deported or will be deported after being tried and/or serving their sentences for crimes committed in the valley. The work being done be Arpaio’s detention staff is a likely contributor to the recent reduction in crime in the valley.
“That number of 16,000 represents a full one-third (1/3) of all inmates in the United States who have had holds placed on them after being identified by jail or prison officials as illegal aliens.”
The same press release indicates that a full 20% of inmates in the county jail are illegal aliens and that OF that 20%, nearly 3/4 of them were arrested for felony crimes.
But what about the “rights” of those illegal aliens, the congressmen wail? What about their feeeeelings, cries ACORN? Not content to just have an investigation into the MCSO, the same congressmen have also now asked that there be an investigation into the actual training provided by the Dept of Homeland Security. Can you even STAND IT???
Meanwhile, Obama’s choice for a top intelligence post has dropped out (are you noticing a pattern here?). I hereby nominate Sherriff Joe to fill the spot, seeing as how he’s obviously more interested in stopping bad guys than anyone else is at the moment. Perhaps those ridiculous congressmen would prefer the border be controlled by some surly puppies:
By the way, if you would like to personally help control illegal immigration, Daisy found an article on a great way you can! Check this out.
