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Title: Trump, Sheriff Joe, and the Thrill of Arbitrary Power
Source:
Reason
URL Source: https://reason.com/archives/2017/08 ... iff-joe-and-the-thrill-of-arbi
Published: Aug 30, 2017
Author: Jacob Sullum
Post Date: 2017-09-01 07:39:57 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 1453
Comments: 5
Three days before Donald Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio, he suggested that the former Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff was "convicted for doing his job." In reality, Arpaio was convicted for doing someone else's job by enforcing federal immigration law. When a federal judge told him to cut it out, Arpaio openly defied the order. By giving a pass to Arpaio's criminal contempt, the president reveals the hollowness of his supposed commitment to law and order. Beginning in 2007, specially trained Maricopa County deputies had authority under Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act to detain people they believed to be in the country illegally. But after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) revoked that authority in 2009, Arpaio's deputies could legally detain people only if they reasonably suspected they were involved in criminal activity, as opposed to a civil violation of federal immigration law. U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow made that point clear in a 2011 preliminary injunction, ordering the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (MCSO) to stop "detaining persons for further investigation without reasonable suspicion that a crime has been or is being committed." Responding to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Snow said "MCSO and all of its officers are hereby enjoined from detaining any person based only on knowledge or reasonable belief, without more, that the person is unlawfully present within the United States." It is clear that Arpaio understood the meaning of Snow's injunction. "If you just believe or you know that [someone] is in the country unlawfully," MCSO's lawyer explained to the sheriff, "you cannot detain him based on that alone. You either are to have an arrest based on state charges or you release. Those are the options." Arpaio, whose reputation, local popularity, and electoral success depended largely on his efforts to catch illegal immigrants, did not like those options. He therefore decided to ignore the injunction, and he made no secret of that decision. "I'm still going to arrest illegal aliens coming into this country," Arpaio said on PBS in 2012. "I'm going to continue to enforce state laws and federal laws," he told Fox News. "Nothing has changed," Arpaio told Univision. According to a 2012 MCSO press release, "Arpaio remains adamant about the fact that his office will continue to enforce both state and federal illegal immigration laws." The sheriff was true to his word. After Snow issued the preliminary injunction in December 2011 and before he made it permanent in May 2013, the MCSO's so-called Human Smuggling Unit (HSU) turned over to ICE 171 people who were not charged with a crime. It is not hard to see why another federal judge, Susan Bolton, concluded last month that Arpaio had "willfully violated" Snow's order, making him guilty of criminal contempt. He was scheduled to be sentenced in October until Trump's pardon let him off. Trump thinks Arpaio, an early supporter of his presidential campaign, is a "great law enforcement person" who "was treated unbelievably unfairly." The important thing for Trump is that Arpaio, like him, is "very strong on illegal immigration." A 2011 report from the Justice Department gives you a sense of what Arpaio's strength looked like in practice. Examining traffic stops by MCSO deputies, the DOJ found that Latino drivers were "four to nine times more likely to be stopped than similarly situated non-Latino drivers." According to the DOJ, about one-fifth of the HSU's reports on traffic stops, "almost all of which involved Latino drivers, contained information indicating that the stops were conducted in violation of the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable seizures." Many of the people detained by Arpaio's deputies were, like the plaintiffs in the ACLU lawsuit, in the country legally but targeted for harassment because of their skin color or accents. Strong men like Arpaio and Trump believe enforcing the law may require breaking it. But to those who suffer the consequences, that kind of strength looks a lot like lawlessness. The president admires strong men who break the law to enforce it.
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#1. To: Deckard (#0)
What law did Arpaio break? Why did the govt break the law and not give him constitutionally guaranteed right to trial by jury. Reason magazine is a magazine for liberal loser druggies.
The fed judge was out of line and makimg stuff up you judge sucker.
Must have been a liberal judge appointed by obama, huh? In an understated yet blistering tweetstorm and a Washington Post piece, Andrew Case, who clerked for the judge who issued the court order that Arpaio flouted, undercuts the sheriff's outrage at the same justice system he supposedly upheld. Arpaio repeatedly attacked Judge G. Murray Snow as a liberal who went after Arpaio out of political bias. The reality is anything but, says Case: It has been widely reported that Snow was appointed by George W. Bush; that is not the full extent of his conservatism. He had a desk blotter from the Romney Institute. He spoke favorably of Justice Antonin Scalia's jurisprudence. While we had little opportunity to talk electoral politics, I would guess he was no fan of President Barack Obama. Snow believed in the rule of law and the fair application of law. During my clerkship year, from September 2011 through September 2012, he heard foreclosure cases, prisoner petitions and many prosecutions of immigrants. A liberal judge could have found loopholes to save a person's house, spring a prisoner or give an immigrant a second chance, but Snow did not: He followed the law.... He treated Arpaio exceptionally fairly throughout the trial. When the plaintiffs presented strong evidence that Arpaio's department mainly stopped Hispanics, Snow emphasized that the lawsuit could not prevail unless they also proved that that was Arpaio's intent. When it was revealed that Arpaio's office had improperly deleted thousands of emails responsive to document requests, Snow ruled only that he "may" take the fact under consideration at trial. And when Snow discovered a procedural issue that could have merited his recusal, he called a hearing, and both sides asked him to stay on the case. Snow repeatedly focused on the facts of the case in front of him, even when incendiary material was presentd. For instance, it turned out that Arpaio had ordered the deletion of official emails requested by the prosecution. When some of those emails were found, they included racist jokes. Joe Arpaio May Have Been Pardoned, But He's Still a Whiny Baby His and President Trump's complaints that he was treated unfairly by the courts are nonsense. Oh? So if they catch a bank robber they should release him? After all, bank robbery is a federal crime, not a state crime, and according to this judge, Sheriff Joe would technically be out of his jurisdiction.
How is that different than New York's "stop and frisk" law that's been in place since 2003? Under that law, police are allowed to "temporarily detain, question, and at times search civilians on the street for weapons and other contraband". For NO reason whatsoever.
#2. To: Deckard (#0)
#3. To: A K A Stone (#2)
The fed judge was out of line and makimg stuff up
“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul
Those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it.
#4. To: Deckard (#0)
You either are to have an arrest based on state charges or you release.
#5. To: Deckard (#0)
"If you just believe or you know that [someone] is in the country unlawfully," MCSO's lawyer explained to the sheriff, "you cannot detain him based on that alone.
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