The Racist Reign of
Sheriff Joe Arpaio
In Arizona, the perils of driving while
brown
WASHINGTON (Washington Post Editorial)
July 30, 2008 — Manuel de Jesus Ortega
Melendres, a Mexican citizen, entered
the United States legally last fall,
using a visa valid until 2016 as well as
a permit from the Department of Homeland
Security. Mr. Ortega had every reason to
believe he was on the right side of the
law, except for one small misstep: being
brown in Maricopa County.
Maricopa, which includes Phoenix, is
home to more than half of Arizona's 6.2
million people. It is also the domain of
Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who is determined to
make life miserable for undocumented
immigrants. Trouble is, "Sheriff Joe,"
as he is universally known, isn't too
particular about how he and his men
identify undocumented immigrants, or
whether they also harass legal
immigrants such as Mr. Ortega, or, for
that matter, American citizens who
happen to be Hispanic. "We know how to
determine whether these guys are
undocumented," Mr. Arpaio told the
Chicago Tribune recently, "the way the
situation looks, how they are dressed,
where they are coming from."
Mr. Ortega had been in the United States
for barely three weeks last September
when Mr. Arpaio's deputies stopped the
vehicle he was riding in. Despite
showing the officers his documents, Mr.
Ortega says he was handcuffed, treated
roughly, jailed and finally turned over
to federal immigration officials, who
promptly released him. During the nine
hours Mr. Ortega spent in custody, no
one offered him a translator, or any
explanation for his treatment, or food
or water. Nor did anyone advise him of
his Miranda rights. Little wonder Mr.
Ortega is now afraid to be seen in
public.
His experience is included in a
class-action lawsuit filed last week in
federal district court in Arizona
against Mr. Arpaio, his office and
Maricopa County. The complaint recounts
similar episodes, including one
involving Velia Meraz and Manuel Nieto,
U.S. citizens who say they were ordered
from their car at gunpoint, handcuffed
and menaced by sheriff's deputies who
seemed to take offense that the pair
were listening to music on a
Spanish-language radio station.
The lawsuit lays out a pattern of
alleged racial profiling by the
sheriff's office, which by all
appearances systematically seizes the
flimsiest of pretexts — failing to use a
turn signal and the like — to check the
papers of people of Hispanic descent. By
equating race with immigration status,
the sheriff's office has made moving
around Maricopa County risky and at
times terrifying for many Latinos,
immigrant and native alike.
Sheriff Joe likes to refer to his
blatantly unconstitutional campaign of
harassment as "crime suppression
sweeps." These "sweeps" have been
denounced not only by Latino groups,
which consider them overtly racist, but
also by the mayor of Phoenix, who has
asked the Justice Department to
investigate, and by Gov. Janet
Napolitano, who has withdrawn state
funding from the sheriff's office.
The sheriff loves describing himself as
a tough guy and delights in humiliating
prisoners by, among other things, making
them wear pink underwear and swelter in
open-air camps. He has gotten away with
it — even won reelection — thanks to his
colorful public persona and an
electorate rattled by the demographic
changes caused by immigration, legal and
undocumented. He denies allegations of
racial profiling even as his deputies
practice something that looks awfully
like it. It's high time for federal
authorities, or courts, to step in to
halt what has become a travesty of
justice in Arizona.
