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PHOENIX
Sheriff Arpaio has raised more than $500,000, and he is mobbed by well-wishers at campaign events, at which he signs autographs and poses for photographs. A poll last month showed him with a comfortable lead over his challenger.
“It’s exciting, taking on an issue that’s really worldwide,” said Sheriff Arpaio, 76, whose deputies, often in the glare of television cameras, have been instructed to pick up illegal immigrants across the county, the nation’s fourth largest and among the fastest growing.
The question is whether Sheriff Arpaio, one of America’s most colorful law enforcement officials, has overstepped his bounds.
A federal lawsuit by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund accuses the sheriff’s department of racial profiling and detaining legal residents and American citizens for long periods while their status is checked. The Government Accountability Office, a watchdog arm of Congress, is re-evaluating a program under which federal officials trained the deputies here and elsewhere in immigration enforcement.
And the mayor of Phoenix, Phil Gordon, has asked the Justice Department to investigate the tactics employed by Sheriff Arpaio, who first gained national attention years ago for forcing inmates to wear pink underwear, housing them in tents and feeding them food of a green hue.
“The sheriff always did his pink underwear and other publicity stunts,” Mr. Gordon said in an interview, in which he expressed regret over not speaking out sooner. “While they were funny, they weren’t breaking the Constitution and they weren’t endangering lives.”
Mr. Gordon said he acted in April after meeting privately at a church with Hispanic constituents who complained that Sheriff Arpaio, in routine patrols and crime sweeps that included the arrest of large numbers of illegal immigrants, had sown a fear of all law enforcement officials, raising concerns that crimes were going unreported.
In addition, the mayor said, a Hispanic aide, who has since joined the racial profiling lawsuit, complained to him of a sheriff’s deputy singling her out to produce a Social Security card while other, non-Hispanic motorists stopped along with her for driving in a restricted area only had to show their licenses.
In the face of all this, Sheriff Arpaio, his voice a laconic baritone this side of John Wayne, remains unbowed.
“I don’t get any kicks because we locked up 30 guys, especially those coming here for jobs,” Sheriff Arpaio said. “What overrides the compassion, I took an oath of office to enforce that law. That’s the difference. What right does an official have to say, I will not defend the Constitution?”
For the better part of two years, it has not been uncommon for people in Maricopa County stopped for traffic infractions to be asked about their immigration status, particularly if they speak only Spanish and wear certain clothing, including jeans and shirts that officials consider characteristic of south of the border.
Most sheriff’s deputies “can make a quick recognition on somebody’s accent, how they’re dressed,” said Bruce Sands, chief of enforcement for the sheriff’s department, where deputies have received training from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The sheriff’s department says the crackdown has rid the county of hundreds of illegal immigrants, including many with felony offenses, and Sheriff Arpaio defends factoring in speech and dress as in line with the training of federal immigration agents; an ICE spokesman would say only that “we use a number of factors” to make such determinations.
Lately, Sheriff Arpaio’s deputies have raided local businesses in an effort to enforce a new state law that aims to punish employers for hiring workers in the country illegally. So far, however, no employers have been charged, though dozens of illegal immigrants have been arrested.
Sheriff Arpaio and his tactics have been closely watched by people on all sides of the immigration debate as they play out in this border state, an incubator for ideas on local enforcement of immigration law.
“What starts in Arizona spreads across the country,” said Chris Newman of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which has mounted protests of Wells Fargo in Chicago, El Paso, Phoenix and San Francisco because it leases space to the sheriff’s office here.
Displaying what even critics call an uncanny knack for reading the popular mood, nearly two years ago Sheriff Arpaio shifted much of his attention to the region’s illegal immigrant population, arresting scores of them during routine and saturation patrols of selected areas and turning them over to federal officials for deportation. He has arrested smugglers as well as the people they were transporting, following state court rulings in his favor.
The Government Accountability Office investigation is examining the federal program known as 287(g), which has provided training to 63 local law enforcement agencies, with Maricopa County having the largest number of participants, in detecting detainees’ immigration status. The inquiry arose through a request by the House Homeland Security Committee, whose members were approached by members of the Arizona delegation concerned about possible civil rights violations.
Separately, ICE officials said the agency was auditing its program with Maricopa, but they characterized that review as routine and not the result of complaints. Richard Rocha, a spokesman for the agency, said it believed the sheriff “is acting within the scope” of the agreement.
A new coalition of labor and community groups, Maricopa Citizens for Safety and Accountability, has accused Sheriff Arpaio of retaliating against opponents.
After a night of saturation patrols in the small suburb of Guadalupe led to a televised confrontation with Rebecca Jimenez, who was then mayor, Sheriff Arpaio threatened to withdraw from a contract to provide policing for the community. The Board of Supervisors approved the move last week but on Monday is to have a revote after it excluded members of the public from its meeting because of protests, possibly violating state law.
Sheriff Arpaio and a close ally, Andrew Thomas, the county attorney and a Republican who has zealously prosecuted immigration law, have publicly sparred with the state attorney general, Terry Goddard, a Democrat, who won his seat over Mr. Thomas in 2002 in a heated campaign.
Sheriff Arpaio announced a corruption inquiry of Mr. Goddard’s office in April 2007, but no charges have resulted.
“We are now a year and a half from that initial press conference where he told the world that’s what he was doing, an unusual way to start an investigation, and we still don’t have a result,” Mr. Goddard said in an interview.
All the focus on immigration has shifted attention from one of Sheriff Arpaio’s primary duties, overseeing 10,000 inmates.
A federal judge is expected to rule soon on an effort by the American Civil Liberties Union to keep in place the federal oversight of the jails that was started in 1995, citing deteriorating conditions and lax medical care in five jails that the A.C.L.U. says pose a risk of serious injury or death to pretrial inmates.
But, despite the intense fire, which now includes daily protests accusing him of failing to process thousands of warrants and costing taxpayers excessive amounts in legal settlements, few here predict the sheriff will lose his job to the challenger, Dan Saban. He is the former police chief in Buckeye and a longtime nemesis who switched parties to run as a Democrat.
