May 4, 2006

Arizona Posse to Arrest Illegal Immigrants

From the AP via Yahoo! News:


A posse of 100 volunteers and sheriff's deputies will patrol the Phoenix area and arrest any illegal immigrants, the county sheriff said.

The group likely will be deployed across parts of Maricopa County by the weekend, Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Wednesday.

Volunteers will be drawn from the department's 3,000-member posse, whose members are trained and are often former deputies.

"It's important to send the message out to stay in Mexico and don't come roaming around here hoping you're going to get amnesty," said Arpaio, who in years past gained notoriety for putting inmates on chain gangs and issuing them striped uniforms and pink underwear.

Arpaio's deputies have already arrested about 120 illegal immigrants using a new state smuggling law.

"We're going to arrest any illegal who violates this new law," he said. "I'm not going to turn these people over to federal authorities so they can have a free ride back to Mexico. I'll give them a free ride into the county jail."

Under the law — as interpreted by the Maricopa County attorney — illegal immigrants can be arrested and prosecuted for conspiracy to smuggle themselves into the country. The law's authors have said they intended it to be used to prosecute smugglers, not the immigrants being smuggled.

Lawyers for nearly 50 undocumented immigrants charged with conspiracy to commit human smuggling have filed motions to have the charges dismissed.

A Los Angeles attorney brought into the case last week by the Mexican Consul General's Office in Phoenix plans to file another motion claiming Maricopa County Attorney officials are violating state and federal law because it's the federal government's job to control illegal immigration.

Both motions are to be argued in county court on May 23.

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Thats the whole article, and hopefully the Associated Press didn't distort the context of this like they did with that article the other day about Iran.

Why is that deputy so hell-bent on putting illegal aliens in prison? If he's pissed off about them being here, why does he want to keep them here? Isn't it obvious that he's got something against non-American people? I'm not gonna say its a racial thing, because its probably not, but he's definately anti-anything thats not American, or at least anti-anyone who isn't American. Its called xenophobia, and this guy is foaming it at the mouth. Xenophobia is gushing from this guy's badge, and the same probably goes for the members of his posse. What is so offensive about someone wanting so much to live a better life that they commit the unthinkable crime of just walking right on in to America instead of trying to go through the tedious legal process?

Like I said yesterday, its more than just "upholding the law", its personal with many people, and I don't think thats a very democratic reason for members of a "democracy" to be so intent on punishing these people.

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