AP (Arizona)
July 5, 2015
America’s
self-proclaimed “toughest sheriff” has been dealt another setback to
his immigration enforcement efforts by a federal judge’s ruling that
bars deputies from
detaining people based solely on the suspicion that they’re in the
country illegally.
The
ruling issued Friday sets the stage for a possible trial in a lawsuit
that alleges racial profiling in the patrols in Arizona’s Maricopa
County, and would further
limit Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s immigration authority after Washington
yanked his federal powers earlier this month.
Lawyers
pushing the lawsuit on behalf of five Latino clients also won
class-action status that lets other Hispanics join the case if they have
been detained and questioned
by Arpaio’s deputies as either a driver or passenger in a vehicle since
January 2007.
U.S.
District Judge Murray Snow hasn’t yet ruled on the ultimate question of
racial profiling, but notes the case’s evidence could lead a judge or
jury to conclude that
Arpaio’s office racially profiles Latinos.
“Sheriff Arpaio has made public statements that a fact-finder could interpret as endorsing racial profiling,” Snow said.
The
judge noted that the sheriff has said that even without authority to
enforce federal immigration laws, his officers can detain people based
upon their speech or they
appear to be from another country.
The
40-page ruling marked a qualified victory for the lawyers who pushed
the lawsuit. They didn’t get the case decided without going to trial, as
they had hoped, but it
came closer to the result they were looking for.
“We
are encouraged by the Court’s recognition of the strong evidence
showing the (Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office’s) pattern and practice of
racial profiling and its
conducting of operations for reasons that are racially biased,” Stan
Young, lead attorney for those who filed the lawsuit, said in a written
statement.
Arpaio
won a small victory when the judge dismissed part of a claim by a
Hispanic couple who are among the five people who filed the lawsuit.
Snow
ruled that one of Arpaio’s deputies had probable cause to pull over the
couple on a closed roadway. The couple’s illegal search claim was
thrown out, but the judge
didn’t dismiss their racial profiling claim.
Messages left for Arpaio’s lawyers weren’t immediately returned late Friday.
The
lawsuit alleges that Maricopa County officers made some traffic stops
solely because Hispanics were driving. The plaintiffs say authorities
had no probable cause to
pull them over and made the stops only to question their immigration
status.
Arpaio
has denied the racial profiling allegations, saying people pulled over
in the patrols were approached because deputies had probable cause to
believe they had committed
crimes and that it was only afterward that deputies found many were
illegal immigrants.
During
the patrols known as “sweeps,” deputies flood an area of a city – in
some cases, heavily Latino areas – over several days to seek out traffic
violators and arrest
other offenders. Illegal immigrants accounted for 57 percent of the
roughly 1,500 people arrested in the 20 sweeps conducted by his office
in earnest since January 2008.
Separate
from the lawsuit, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a Dec. 15
report that accused Arpaio’s office of having a pattern of racially
profiling Latinos, basing
immigration enforcement on racially-charged citizen complaints and
punishing Hispanic jail inmates for speaking Spanish.
Arpaio
faces a Jan. 4 deadline for saying whether he wants to work out an
agreement to settle the civil rights allegations. The Justice Department
has said it’s prepared
to sue Arpaio and let a judge decide the matter if no agreement can be
worked out.
The
Justice Department report prompted U.S. Department of Homeland Security
to strip Arpaio’s office of its federal powers to verify the
immigration status of jail inmates.
The severing of those ties came after an October 2009 decision by
Homeland Security to take away the federal immigration arrest powers
from 100 of Arpaio’s deputies.
Arpaio is left with only state immigration laws to carry out his patrols – and those powers were limited by the judge Friday.
Apart
from the lawsuit and civil rights report against the sheriff’s office, a
federal grand jury also has been investigating Arpaio’s office on
criminal abuse-of-power
allegations since at least December 2009.
Grand jurors are examining the investigative work of the sheriff’s anti-public corruption squad.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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