Jane Sanders is a professor and she’s a social worker. She is presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ wife. Right now she is out and about meeting Americans, trying to learn about the myriad needs of many different communities, while campaigning for her husband. She was in Phoenix the other day with Bernie on the campaign trail. She decided that she wouldn’t worry too much about seeing the zoo or the Desert Botanical Garden, and instead would go and talk with undocumented workers, their families, as well as visit the infamous Tent City. Tent City is the perverse sadomasochistic fever dream of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Sheriff Joe heard that Jane Sanders was going to be at Tent City:
I’m guessing he had to adjust his gun because he’s … afraid of being killed by Jane Sanders? Maybe he’s afraid that the men and women in Tent City might riot again because of the inhumane conditions and try to murder him? Who is to say? Only Joe and his collection of John Wayne movies knows.
Sheriff Joe tried to turn around Jane Sanders visit by saying:
She was shocked. Everybody here has been convicted. She didn’t even know that.
That is shocking news, Sheriff Joe! You may want to take a seat, Sheriff Joe, adjust your gun again, because here’s another shock: that’s not fucking true.
The facility is a jail. Most of the people held there are awaiting trial, or people serving short sentences, typically less than a year. According to Maricopa officials, "dangerous or predatory individuals are not placed there."
Most people there are low-level criminals, or not yet convicted. Under the law, jails should not be punitive, but Tent City clearly comes across that way.
Besides being a racist, corrupt pig of a man, Sheriff Joe is also a coward of a man. He’s a bad person. I don’t like him. At all. His go-to argument when being confronted by the medieval conditions of his prison, is that soldiers in far away countries live in tough conditions so why should criminals get off better?
Sanders challenged whether the arrangement was humane.
“This sun,” she said. “We’re out here just for a few minutes, and it’s hard. To be in those tents."
“It’s 135 degrees in Iraq,” Arpaio quipped.
Funny fact: Sheriff Joe has always been a corrupt dick.
Jane Sanders was really there to talk about immigration and the fact that Tent City is really just Arizona’s way of creating an internment camp for people who speak Spanish.
When Sanders accused Arpaio of being “supportive of racial profiling,” the sheriff brushed her off.
“I’m not going to get into that because of legal issues,” he said.
Maybe Sheriff Joe is talking about costing the Arizona’s taxpayers upwards of $200 million dollars because of what a dictatorial asshole he is. Sheriff Joe wants to be in power indefinitely, he would like to run again for a seventh term this year. He’s aligned himself with Donald Trump because a Donald Trump presidency promises the abolition of civil rights and liberties and that’s a world where Sheriff Joe doesn’t have to worry anymore about being sued forever and ever and ever.