The criminal trial for Joe Arpaio begins today, with the birther and disgraced former Maricopa County sheriff facing a charge of federal criminal contempt of court for defying a judge’s order to stop targeting Latino and immigrant drivers. If convicted, the “bad hombre” faces up to six months in the slammer. No word if he’d still make it in time to sit in pink underwear in the notorious “Tent City” that his successor is shutting down by the end of this year:
The eight-day trial that begins Monday in federal court in Phoenix will determine whether the 85-year-old retired lawman is guilty of misdemeanor contempt of court for disobeying a judge’s order to stop traffic patrols that targeted immigrants. The judge later found his officers racially profiling Latinos.
The former six-term sheriff of metro Phoenix has acknowledged defying the judge’s 2011 order in a racial profiling lawsuit by prolonging the patrols for months. But he insists it was not intentional. To win a conviction, prosecutors must prove he violated the order on purpose.
For the advocates on the ground who spent years fighting back against Arpaio’s anti-immigrant nativism and helped hand him a long-awaited defeat last November, there’s no doubt in their minds about his intent. "His legend will be that he destroyed our community and he got busted for it,” said Lydia Guzman, a plaintiff in the lawsuit against Arpaio.
According to USA Today, more than 700 undocumented immigrant workers in Maricopa County were swept up in immigration raids and turned over to federal immigration agents during Arpaio’s reign of terror. One of the immigrants arrested during one of Arpaio’s first raids also became one of the first immigrants to be deported following Donald Trump’s inauguration, leaving behind two U.S. citizen children.
For eight years, Guadalupe García de Rayos had checked in at the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement office here, a requirement since she was caught using a fake Social Security Number number during a raid in 2008 at a water park where she worked.
Every year since then, she has walked in and out of the meetings after a brief review of her case and some questions.
But not this year.
On Wednesday, immigration agents arrested Ms. Rayos, 35. Despite efforts by her family and others who tried to block, legally and physically, her removal from the United States, she was deported Thursday to Nogales, Mexico, the same city where she crossed into the United States 21 years ago.
Arpaio’s anti-immigrant crusade ended up costing taxpayers more than $142 million in lawsuits while more than 400 sex crimes went ignored or under-investigated, all because he and his posse were too busy rounding up moms like Guadalupe to focus on arresting actual dangers to the public. But there could be some justice in the world, now that Arpaio’s anti-immigrant grandstanding is coming back to bite him in his ass.
The judge concluded that Arpaio ignored the order because he believed his immigration enforcement efforts would help his 2012 campaign. The TV interviews, news releases and tough talk about America’s border woes that Arpaio used over the years to boost his popularity are now being used against him in court.
The sheriff’s office issued a news release a week after the judge told it to stop the patrols saying it would continue to enforce immigration laws. Arpaio also gave a March 2012 TV interview in which he said his office was still detaining immigrants who were in the country illegally.
The retired lawman lost a request to prohibit prosecutors from mentioning comments he made about immigration during his last three campaigns.