In Phoenix, journalists have scratched their heads over a non-existent federal illegal immigration law citation that Sheriff Joe Arpaio trumpeted last week as a reason for his upcoming immigration raid tomorrow, October 16.
According to Arpaio’s interpretation of Title 8, it’s okay to stop folks for the way they dress or speak or behave.
Several bloggers, including The Arizona Captiol Times Policy Wonk, noted that the law as cited by Arpaio–sounded awfully fishy.
In fact,the pundits pointed out, such a law didn’t exist.
Someone–a staffer? an anti-undocumented immigrant advocate?–had evidently given the sheriff this distinctly unconstitutional interpretation of Title 8, and Sheriff Joe insisted it was the real law.
Whoops.
Who’s laughing now, Sheriff Joe?
Photo by Kathy McCraine
How could Sheriff Joe make such a mistake? And what does this say about his staff?
The sheriff ‘s office just sent out a press release acknowledging the gaffe. Here is what the press release says:
Last week during a news conference discussing the Sheriff’s agreement with ICE and the 287g agreement, Sheriff Arpaio made reference to and distributed a document that is an interpretation of Title 8 of the U.S. Code regarding federal immigration laws and the authority to enforce those laws.
Over recent weeks, Sheriff’s Office staff has been conducting research on the issue of federal immigration laws and how the Sheriff’s Office will be affected by the loss of the law enforcement portion of the 287g program.
During that research, the Sheriff’s Office has referred to title 8 of the U.S. code as well as a multitude of interpretations of federal law. This form containing an interpretation was inadvertently given to the Sheriff with an incorrect citation of a certain section of federal law as an example of how to pursue the federal law.
Although the citation and language does not appear in the U.S. code, title 8 does exist and the Sheriff’s Office believes that it still has the authority under federal law to detain illegal aliens during the course of their duties.
Sheriff Joe plans a raid tomorrow, October 16. I will try to tweet from the streets of Phoenix. It will be a spectacle. It will be terrifying.
But he won’t catch a lot of undocumented people.
Why?
Because these raids aren’t really designed to catch undocumented people. Because these raids are Sheriff Joe’s way of communicating with his conservative base, telling them through the TV cameras that he’s on the job. Here’s the truth: Sheriff Joe never catches a lot of undocumented people in these raids.
They are publicity stunts.
See you tomorrow, October 16, on Twitter.
You can’t make this stuff up — classic Arpaio