PHOENIX NEW TIMES FILES ITS SECOND REPORT QUESTIONING  A MYSTERIOUS SHOOTING OF PINAL COUNTY DEPUTY, WHO SAID HE WAS SHOT BY MEXICAN DRUG TRAFFICKERS WITH AK-47-TYPE WEAPONS IN THE DESERT NEAR PHOENIX.  THE ALLEGED SHOOTERS, WHO WERE MOVING POT, ACCORDING TO THE DEPUTY, WERE NEVER FOUND, DESPITE A MASSIVE SEARCH. THE DEPUTY WAS TREATED AND RELEASED FROM THE HOSPITAL THAT SAME NIGHT.

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Our thoughts & prayers go out to the Pinal County Deputy shot during a stop.Contrary to what some leaders say,our borders are not secure.6:13 PM Apr 30th via Tweetie –

A tweet by Governor Jan Brewer in the wake of the deputy shooting, one week after she signed controversial SB 1070.

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For those of you who don’t know me, I was a staff writer at Phoenix New Times for fourteen years.  One of my colleagues, Paul Rubin, was and is the best crime reporter in Arizona. He is really well sourced. Cops trust him and tell him things they won’t tell anyone else.

So when Rubin filed a report  that questioned the shooting of a Pinal County sheriff’s deputy just days after Gov. Jan Brewer signed the controversial SB 1070  immigration law, I took notice. He’s not the kind of reporter who shoots from the hip. He knows his business.

Here is his latest report.

Yesterday, I drove around a suburb of Phoenix searching for a Oaxacan café that served chapulines, fried grasshoppers.

The store had closed. I was disappointed, because I  had wanted to write about people who eat chapulines for my book. Grasshoppers are eaten by indigenous Mexicans, and they’re a great source of protein.

I swear I’m not making this up,  but the very next day I met a source for an interview. As he walked in the room, he carried a little plastic tub full of fried, salted chapulines.  His dad had brought them up to Arizona from the Mexican state of Guerrero.  Here is a picture I took of the tub of grasshoppers.

Photo by Terry Greene Sterling

The man told me that female grasshoppers taste  better than male grasshoppers because female grasshoppers are fattier. This is a picture of a male and female grasshopper he picked out of the tub.

Photo by Terry Greene Sterling

“Eat one,” the man told me,  ”but first pull off the legs because they are like splinters and get caught in the throat.”

“OK,” I said.

I chose the guy grasshopper.

It took me a couple of tries, but I finally got the little fellow  in my mouth.

I forced myself to chew. The chapulín tasted clean, salty and crispy.

God, I love writing this book.

Since 2008, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has ordered thirteen raids (aka crime suppression operations) of heavily Latino Phoenix-area neighborhoods and workplaces in search of  ”illegals.”

But if he and his advisors gambled that rounding up hotel maids and landscapers would gain him more voter approval, they gambled wrong.

In part due to his “hard-nosed and sometimes perceived heavy handed tactics against illegal aliens” as well as an ongoing federal grand jury inquiry over alleged abuses of power, Sheriff Joe’s  support is tanking in the Phoenix metro area, according to a recent poll of Maricopa County voters.

The details: Well-respected local pollster Earl de Berge, who has taken the pulse of Phoenix for many years,  found that only 39 percent of registered voters now  approve of Sheriff Joe. That’s down from an astonishing 64 percent approval rating in 2007.  According to the poll, Sheriff Joe’s still got most of the county’s GOP voters in his camp, but he’s lost the support of those free-thinking Independents. And in a state where one-third of the voters are Republicans, one-third of the voters are Democrats (they never cottoned to Joe) and one-third of the voters are Independents, Joe might well lose his next election.

Which might explain why Sheriff Joe sent out a  fund-raising letter to voters who live outside of Maricopa County. A friend of mine who lives in heavily conservative Yavapai County forwarded me  a copy of Sheriff Joe’s fundraising letter. It references a January 16 human rights march in Phoenix that I happened to cover for my book, which comes out in August and is called ILLEGAL: Life and Death in the Undocumented Underground.

Before I get into the letter, here’s a picture of the march  by  photographer Kathy McCraine. (I’m the female journalist in jeans covering the march.) Do you see nasty signs? Do you see masked marchers? Do you see hooligans?

Photo by Kathy McCraine

See, the reason I ask all these questions is because Sheriff Joe, in a fundraising letter that he sent to  those conservative prospective donors in Yavapai County, writes this about the march documented in the picture above:

“On January 16, 2010, more than 10,000 protestors marched on my jails to oppose my enforcement of state and federal immigration laws.

Protestors brawled with and assaulted police. Demonstrators dressed in all black and wearing hoods to conceal their identity threw bottles filled with rocks and attacked officers including a mounted officer and her horse. The mob then surrounded her and hit the horse with sticks.

The masked protestors screamed profanities and called for my assassination carrying signs that read “Assassinate Arpaio” and other violent messages some so profane, I won’t bother repeating them here.”

Sheriff Joe says in the letter to send money fast, so he can continue to enforce the law even in the face of mounting attacks from the Leftist media, the Leftist presidency, the Leftist U.S. Attorney’s Office, and now, from this most recent demonstration he infers  a mob of 10,000 masked izquierdistas  threw bottles and beat horses with sticks.

Here’s the truth: Of 10,000 marchers, 9,997 were peaceful.

That’s according to public documents.

Only three marchers were singled out by county prosecutors for causing trouble at the January 16 march. That’s right. Three people. The first, nineteen-year-old Jeremiah Matthew Henry, allegedly used a wooden stick to whack a mounted Phoenix police officer  who was “working crowd control.” Twenty-seven-year-old Issa Emadi is accused of throwing one water bottle at the cops.  And twenty-four-year-old Sarah Grace Daniels is accused of striking a cop with the handle of a banner she had been carrying in the march.

I’m not saying Henry, Emadi and  Daniels were in the right if they did what they are accused of doing. They face serious criminal charges for their actions, and if they’re guilty, they’ll pay.

But isn’t it also a sin to scare donors into sending you money by  painting  an entire group of peaceful marchers (mostly Latino families) as radicals?

I have covered several of these marches against the Sheriff’s alleged violations of human rights, and I can tell you I have never seen any violence. I didn’t see violence on January 16.

However, a mom, dad and their two children  saw part of the melee that allegedly involved Henry, Daniels and Emadi. The parents told me they saw a female mounted cop ride into the crowd and squirt  people with pepper spray. Of course, the cop was probably trying to subdue the three protestors.

Unfortunately, the Phoenix mountie also sprayed this immigrant couple’s  five-year-old son.

The child was treated at a hospital emergency room for breathing difficulties.

I took this picture of him a week later. I slanted  my iPhone camera in order to take advantage of the natural light. 

You can see the child is  physically okay now, and he doesn’t like to talk about the pepper spray. Scroll back up and take a look at his eyes. You’ve  got to wonder what goes on inside his five-year-old heart whenever he sees a uniformed cop or a horse.

Ask yourself: Who is the true victim?

The boy?

Or the sheriff?

I don’t want to write about Molly Molloy.

But I have to.

First, though, here’s her picture.

Molly Molloy's photo by Richard Barron

You can see she’s standing next to border trash. She understands that just like everything else on the US-Mexico border, it means many things. It says many things.  It provokes  outrage, sorrow, curiosity.

It is part of an undocumented region.

Which brings us back to Molly Molloy,  a fifty-four year-old-librarian, historian,  journalist and writer.   She grew up in the American South, graduated from college, worked odd jobs, and then lived for almost two years in Latin America, where she became fluent in Spanish. (She’s really good at Spanish, so good that she’s served as a translator for a guy I think is one of the most clear thinking, talented, and honest writers in the Southwest– Charles Bowden.) In 1992, Molly Molloy became a librarian at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico.  Las Cruces sits close to the Mexican border, near the Rio Grande River.  And it’s less than an hour’s drive from El Paso, Texas, which is just across the river from Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico.

Where, according to Molly Molloy’s most recent dispatch, thirteen high school kids were massacred early this morning.

You see, Molly opens our eyes to such things via her Google group. It is called “Frontera List.”   If you join this group,  you will know what is happening at the U.S. Mexican Border from multiple perspectives. In  English.  In Spanish. From journalists, scholars, writers, victims, activists, migrants, Americans, Mexicans, and citizens of the world. Here’s the link:   http://groups.google.com/group/frontera-list?hl=en

Here’s a dispatch that Molly sent today. First she writes:

These stories were posted this morning at about 10 am, but I was on my way out toplay music at a church in Las Cruces.  The sermon and scripture today was all about LOVE–St. Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 13, verses 1-13…  Look it up. Many of you probably know it by heart like I do. I am certain I was the only person in the room to feel the power of the irony here.  It took the El Paso Times till about noon to post a link to the Reuters article.  See below. The massacre happened just after midnight, according to El Diario and Lapolaka.  I encourage you to look at the photos. Rivers of blood in the street outside of the house where the events took place. Follows my translation of the Diario article, the original, Reuters in English, and Lapolaka…  The photos are at the links. Also below, two other killings reported from late last night that are not included in the total for yesterday.  So, if it was 205 this morning, then it is now at least 220.  Note that of the injured in this automatic weapons fire, more will probably not survive and their deaths will probably not be reported.  molly

[Next, Molly translates some of the story from the Mexican newspaper of record, El Diario.]

http://www.diario.com.mx/nota.php?notaid=3eefbef53ec9362ca0516f9081ddf6a1
Students massacred in Villas de Salvarcar
Thirteen were killed and 8 injured in an armed attack carried out by a
group of individuals who arrived in 7 vehicles in the Villas de
Salvarcar neighborhood.
The majority of the victims are minors, students at two different
schools.
The attack occurred in the early hours of Sunday at the intersection
of Vista del Portal and Portal de Salvarcar, where a party was being
held.
Two other people died at the scene who were not part of the group and
had arrived on a motorcycle to buy sodas at a store next door to the
house where the massacre took place.
The injured were taken in private vehicles to social security clinic
66 located a few minutes from the scene. Of the 11 injured in all, 2
died inside the hospital and another outside–the last was semi-nude
as he had gone outside of the house when he heard the first shots.
Among the victims also is an adolescent who, it is said, was a witness
to a multiple homicide that occurred in the El Campanario neighborhood
a few days ago.
It is worth mentioning that the residents of the area nearly lynched
the soldiers and police who arrived at the scene of the crimes, as
they seemed to only hold up the investigations and also trampled on
the evidence at the crime scene.
The informants said that the attackers arrived in 7 vehicles, that
they used the vehicles to block the street, others kept guard while
others carried out the attack.

[Then Molly  posts links to the stories that document this horror.]

http://www.diario.com.mx/nota.php?notaid=3eefbef53ec9362ca0516f9081ddf6a1
Masacran a estudiantes en Villas de Salvárcar

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE60U1CQ20100131
Gunmen kill 13 students at party in Mexico

http://lapolaka.com/2010/01/31/aberrante-masacre-estudiantil/
ABERRANTE MASACRE ESTUDIANTIL..!
http://lapolaka.com/2010/01/31/aberrante-masacre-estudiantil/
Descargado de Lapolaka.com © 2010

http://www.diario.com.mx/nota.php?notaid=7e327d360fdee704e8ad877ece1e0704
Asesinan a dos en distintos hechos

OK, now you see why I didn’t want to write about Molly  and her work. She is a treasure trove of story ideas for journalists covering the border.

But her work should be shared with the world, because many more than just selfish journalists yearn to know about the border – the deaths, the boondoggles, the drug cartels, the politics, the economics, the personal stories.

The varied experiences of life and death on the border are being erased faster than they can become known, studied and understood.

Molly wrote this on behalf of New Mexico State University Library to see if in this ongoing recession someone, somehow, someplace, can fund an archive at the library where a record of what is happening on the border  can be preserved, studied, and perhaps understood.

Because I can’t understand it now.

I can’t understand why thirteen high schoolers were gunned down in Juárez, right across the river from El Paso.

And if it weren’t for Molly Molloy, I wouldn’t even know it happened.

Julián LeBarón has the soul of a Mexican, and it might kill him.

Let me explain.

Julián LeBarón was born in Mexico and lives in a town called Colonia LeBarón in Chihuahua, a Mexican border state where thousands of men, women, and children have been  slaughtered in a “drug war”  that  is increasingly difficult to comprehend or even define.

It began in 2006 as President Felipe Calderón launched an ongoing attack against some enterprising drug cartels who made billions selling coke and heroin and speed and pot to the largest consumer of drugs in the world — the United States of America.

So far, at least 16,000 people have died in that war.

That’s according to  a great study called Drug Violence in Mexico, published by the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego.

The  bloodbath is inchoate, incomprehensible. The average Mexican may not  know who is on what side. Is the soldier really working for the narcotrafficker? Is the narcotrafficker really working for the government? And God knows how many have joined  the splinter (often coked out or tweaked out) gangs of kidnappers and for-hire murderers  in military outfits who kill and torture just to make a few bucks for themselves.

Of all the states in Mexico, Chihuahua endured the most killings in 2009 — Mexican newspaper reports range from 3,637 to 2,079, according to the Trans-Border Institute.

That death toll includes Julián’s brother, Benjamín. He had refused to pay a $1 million ransom for his kid brother, who was kidnapped near town.  The kid brother was eventually released unharmed and without ransom by the perplexed kidnappers, but they didn’t like Benjamín’s tough-on-crime attitude.

Benjamín organized his  extended family (it’s a very large extended family,  we’ll get to why soon) against kidnapping and killing and thuggery and wanton violence in  Colonia LeBarón. Then masked men  broke into his home, kidnapped him and a brother-in-law,  and shot them to death.

Besides Benjamín and his brother-in-law, Julían tells me over the phone, five others have been murdered, and Julián has gotten death threats and  was recently assaulted by four masked creeps  in the middle of town in the middle of the day and everyone knows who they were but no one’s done anything about it.

“I’m not safe at all,” he tells me. “I am threatened with death all the time. At least five people have told me I’m on a hit list.”

He refuses to run, to give in to the bad guys.

He could go to the United States, where he holds dual citizenship with Mexico. But he’s always been more comfortable in the country where he was born. So instead of running, he writes. In  early January, he  published a manifesto against violence, in Spanish, on the Internet.

In this manifesto, he proposes a non-violent national organized opposition to violence.

Mexicans are strong courageous people who should rise up and say “BASTA” to the slaughter, the manifesto says.

“You might think I’m crazy,” Julián tells me, “but it can be done.”

The manifesto serves another purpose — it attracts press attention, spotlights Julián’s predicament. The more  publicity, perhaps, the less danger.

And to think that just a few years ago, Colonia LeBarón was a peaceful little town.

“The (Calderón) drug war is not something most Mexicans agree with,” he says.

In the old days, before the Drug War, drug dealers were seen as Robin Hoods who sold “poison” to the gringos who deserved it because they screwed Mexico with trade agreements that made people even more poor than they already were, he tells me. And he makes sure I know that he doesn’t believe gringos should be poisoned with drugs, and that he has never had any association with drug dealers or drugs.

The problem now is that Mexicans themselves are consuming the “poison” that they were selling to gringos, he says.

I’ve seen newspaper photos of the little desert farming town where he lives. It’s got a lot of pecan orchards. It sits near mountains. It’s  called Colonia LeBarón because it is inhabited mostly by LeBaróns, who trace their roots to fundamentalist Mormon polygamists who moved to Mexico in the 1880′s. They came south in part to escape growing controversy and outrage over their lifestyle, which was espoused by the founding Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith.

The  LeBaróns have cousins  in places like Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah and ElDorado, Texas. These fundamentalist polygamous Mormon cults have been disavowed by  mainstream Mormons since polygamy was outlawed in the 1890′s. Such  standoffish polygamous sects in the American West face increasing scrutiny and several cult leaders have been sentenced to prison in connection with marrying underage girls.

In the history of fundamentalist Mormons, the LeBarón name isn’t without controversy. An ancestor, Ervil LeBarón, died in prison in 1981 while serving time for  murder. He issued dicta from prison that allegedly set off a killing spree of  his enemies.

This, of course, has nothing to do with Julián LeBaron, who was a baby  at the time of the killings and who tells me he despises everything  about Ervil LeBarón.

Julián is a devout Mormon fundamentalist, and belongs to a religious group that believes in the practice of polygamy, also called “plural marriage.”  (He has never practiced it himself, and doesn’t intend to, and doesn’t want his name associated with it, he says.)

According to Julián, the  Chihuahua LeBaróns may believe plural marriage but they  differ from their gringo counterparts in a number of ways. The sister wives at Colonia LeBarón don’t wear prairie dresses and pull their hair on top of their heads. The guys don’t marry underage girls. They own land and property individually, instead of communally. And there’s no strict ban on alcohol — Julián himself downs a cold one every now and again, although he points out he’s no drunkard.

Julián is thirty-two years old, and for many years he traveled north to the United States to earn a living as a bilingual framer.  He saved his money, sent it down to Mexico to his family, just like a lot of Mexicans.

He tells me he’s  framed  buildings “all over the country,” including in New Orleans right  after Hurricane Katrina. His first job in New Orleans: Repairing  a funeral home. There were so many dead bodies.

Now he’s trying to stay alive, keep himself from being a stiff in a funeral home.

Julián knows he could come to the United States and run away from the violence.

But he won’t, because Mexico is in his soul.

The people in the shadows often pray to the Virgin of Guadalupe. They pray to the brown Virgen because after all she is a mom, the one who cares, the one who loves them unconditionally and will intercede on their behalf with all the male deities in her family. The Virgen has brown skin, just like the people in the shadows. She has suffered, just as they suffer. And because she is a mother figure, they can talk to her just as they talk to their human mothers.

And she’ll listen, and do all she can for them, because she loves them that much.

During the time of the rosarios, the Virgen is taken from home to home. She stays for one  night at each home, and the people in the shadows say a rosary to her. The next day, she’s taken to another home. Another rosary is said in her honor in the new home. And so it goes.  In Phoenix, a lot of  the homes the Virgen visits belong to people on the edge. The recession, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and the harshest laws in the nation against undocumented people have all taken their toll. But the  Virgen loves the people in the shadows, and they love her, and sometimes honestly that’s all they need. Here is a picture of the Virgen at one of the homes in Phoenix. She stands on an altar  outside a house trailer. The people inside don’t have money to buy food. But they give thanks to their  Virgencita anyway.

La Virgencita in Phoenix -- Photo by Terry Greene Sterling

The feast day of the  Virgin of Guadalupe is December 12, and that is the last day of the rosario. As the feast day approaches, many of the people in the shadows take joy in the matachine dancers. You can read historical context of the matachines here. These dancers dance in gratitude to the Virgin of Guadalupe.  And the dancers aren’t professionals, but the people in the shadows themselves.

Sometimes, they dance in the day. And sometimes, they dance in the night.

Matachine Dancers in Phoenix Photo by Terry Greene Sterling

On December 6, the matachine dancers assembled at the Immaculate Heart Catholic Church in Phoenix. (This was a church built many years ago because Mexicans weren’t all that welcome in white Catholic churches. Hey, it’s Phoenix. What did you expect?) The matachine dancers danced all the way to the headquarters of the  Diocese of Phoenix, where they were blessed by the bishop. I think this was about mile or so of dancing. I videotaped it on my iPhone, and made a movie out of it, which you will see below. It reminded me how privileged I am to write a book and tell the untold stories of the people in the shadows. For me, it is such an honor to write a book for a non-Spanish speaking audience, a book that  conveys how undocumented immigrants live, love, sin, hope and pray. And one of the lessons I’ve come away with is this: You don’t need a lot of stuff  to celebrate and give thanks.  You just need to sing and dance.

So now, from the hidden worlds of the undocumented immigrant to you–an iPhone video.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZab6PeGL9c

Merry Christmas from Terry Greene Sterling. Merry Christmas! Sing! Dance! Be grateful!

Just when he was getting really uncomfortable, Sheriff Joe Arpaio escaped on Monday night  from  the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.  He stepped off the podium.   His aides led him away.

I’ll tell you why.

First, though,  full disclosure.

I am the writer-in-residence at the Cronkite school. I am writing a book about the undocumented underground in Arizona. The professors who grilled Arpaio in the aborted  Meet-the-Press-style forum are my colleagues. This blog, however, is not affiliated with ASU. It is my personal blog. No one tells me what to write. Hey, I  even follow the writing rules of the Chicago Manual of Style, which is more writerly  than  Associated Press style, which journalism schools tend to use.

Okay. Back to the story.

In  August, when I spoke with Sheriff Joe,  he appeared to relish the idea of facing off against the Cronkite journalism profs in a Meet-the-Press-ish forum. “They’re gonna slam me,” he told me. You’ve got to understand that in  Joe Arpaio’s lexicon, the words “slam me” don’t  necessarily have a negative connotation. I mean, the sheriff  doesn’t just sit there and answer questions.  Instead, he shoots back with polished sound bites that signal to his conservative base that he’s on the job, sparring with  those  journos.

On Monday, the  usual cast of Sheriff Joe’s supporters began showing up in front of the Cronkite building in downtown Phoenix at about 6 p.m. Here’s a picture of one supporter. 

The  guy held two signs. One said: We love you Sheriff Joe! The other said: ASU students can’t read this sign. I’d say  maybe thirty  similarly minded supporters showed up. Some carried signs that said: Illegals Must Go.  The protesters were mostly old Anglos who didn’t like illegal immigration. Or Mexicans. Some packed guns. (Although non-felons are allowed to carry guns in Arizona, they can’t pack on ASU campuses.) The  cops asked the pro-Joe demonstrators to get rid of their sidearms.  The demonstrators disappeared  for a few minutes, then returned unarmed. Or so they said.

About three times as many anti-Arpaioists, non-students and college students of every race, carried signs with messages ranging from opposition to the sheriff’s alleged human-rights abuses of undocumented immigrants to suggestions that sheriff was a card-carrying member of the  KKK.

Photo by Janessa Hilliard

A couple of these anti-Arpaioists  also had guns.

One anti-Arpaioist  packed a pistol and a World War II-era Russian rifle with a bayonet. The cops made him stand on the other side of Central Avenue.

The evening was progressing predictably.  Just as they always do, the  anti-Arpaioists waved aromatic  sage smoke through the air  to purify the place from bad pro-Joe vibes. They beat drums and pots. They chanted: Joe must go. A few of them wore black hoodies and bandannas around their faces so you could only see their eyes. These people understood street theater.

At the pizza store near the journalism school, I saw a sign on the door.

Photo by Terry Greene Sterling

It read: Arpaio Supporters Not Welcome. The assistant manager said he put the sign up because he didn’t “appreciate Aryan Brotherhood people” coming into his store.

By then, probably three  hundred people had gathered outside of the Cronkite school. Maybe a fourth  of the crowd consisted of  cops and journalists.

Only  students, professors and journalists were allowed inside the Cronkite building to hear the journalism professors question the sheriff.  Those not affiliated with ASU could watch the hour-long forum on a giant screen outside, on the mall.

Inside, I couldn’t find a seat. Students crowded around the railings on the third floor. They perched on the stairs. Many were  students I didn’t recognize. They weren’t journalism students.

At first,  Sheriff Joe responded to questions with his usual sound bites. Stuff like “I answer only to the people of Maricopa County who have elected me.” But I heard an edge creep into his voice as he fielded  well-researched questions about things that really matter–like the Sheriff’s alleged stonewalling of  public records requests.

The students, our future journalists,  were learning from seasoned professionals how to ask big-time politicos tough questions, persistently. Public  records may sound boring, but journalists  rely on  them to figure out what’s going on in taxpayer-funded projects. Like the Iraq War.  Or  Sheriff Joe’s jails.

Public records are key to keeping government honest.  As Americans, we have a right to see how our elected officials are spending taxpayer money and running taxpayer-funded projects. Of course, public officials  don’t always want to hand over public records because if they do journalists will learn the truth and convey the truth to voters. Or maybe get them indicted.

So long story short, the Cronkite students were getting one heck of an education as they listened to their profs  put Sheriff Joe’s feet to the fire about public records requests and other  journalism-related questions.

My own feet were hurting, I couldn’t see the panel, so I wandered downstairs to see if I could catch the forum on the outside screen. Suddenly, dozens  of  protesters crowded into the lobby,  blasting the journalism school for having the forum in the first place. It  was all very Cal-Berkeley in the 1960′s.

Only this time, it was stupid.

Photo by Terry Greene Sterling

Photo by Terry Greene Sterling

What was the matter with the protesters, anyway? Couldn’t they see that the school was training future journalists? Didn’t they understand that  students were learning how to interview powerful public figures who were rarely held accountable for their alleged abuses of power?

I walked over to the outside screen, where about a hundred people had gathered to watch the forum inside. To my surprise,  Rick Rodriguez, a Cronkite prof who once ran The Sacramento Bee, was  making the sheriff visibly uncomfortable as he asked persistent questions about why the sheriff refused to cooperate with the U.S. Justice Department, which is investigating the sheriff’s alleged retaliatory abuses of power against judges and mayors and politicians and cops who dared criticize him.

Then suddenly, the forum fell apart.

Non-journalism student protesters in the audience, those  students I didn’t recognize who had crowded around the rails, began an organized demonstration that involved high-decibel  singing and chanting and yelling.  They wouldn’t stop. They wouldn’t shut up. They went on and on, preventing  Rodriguez from getting key answers from the sheriff about why he would not  cooperate with the agency  investigating him for tormenting his enemies.

This was great for Sheriff Joe.

The demonstrators  gave him an excuse to quit the forum just as it was getting very very awkward for him.

The sheriff left  the building.

Scowling, of course.

I wondered if he was secretly relieved.  Did  the sheriff sense the truth–that  Rodriguez would have pursued him  into the gates of hell to learn why he wouldn’t cooperate with the Justice Department?

I think so.

And I don’t think the sheriff wanted to answer Professor Rodriguez’s  questions.

For obvious reasons.

After the sheriff’s exit, the demonstrators were jubilant. They played music. They sang. They hugged each other. They climbed on a shelf and hung out a banner. Hey, they’d  broken up the forum. They’d run the sheriff off the stage.

They were just kids. They didn’t understand that they had rescued Sheriff Joe.

They didn’t understand that thanks to them, Arizona’s most controversial public official avoided answering questions that mattered.

To  all of us.

A few months ago,  in Phoenix, illegal immigration opponents  testified tearfully  about how cops had been shot by undocumented immigrants. This wasn’t a street rally, it was a state senate subcommittee hearing chaired by Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce, who spearheaded passage of The Employer Sanctions Act and other state laws that Sheriff Joe Arpaio now cites as reasons for  his raids.

For what must have been the umpteenth time, Pearce  listened to his own son, a sheriff’s deputy, detail how he’d  been shot three times by an undocumented immigrant during a bust that went awry.

The senior Pearce was near tears as he rattled off names of  cops in Arizona and across the nation who  had been killed  by undocumented immigrants.

It is awful, Senator Pearce. I agree.

It’s also awful when undocumented immigrants are stabbed by teens who said they were on the prowl for “beaners.”

This is why the New York based  activist group Long Island Wins focuses today on  the slaughter of  Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero. The New York  group, which advocates for immigrants rights and comprehensive immigration reform, has launched a memorial of Lucero on the anniversary of his death. You can read about it here.

The point is, undocumented immigrants, like cops, shouldn’t be slaughtered on the streets.

It works both ways.

People  come to Phoenix and encounter  Sheriff Joe Arpaio, kidnappers, cold hearts, warm hearts, Russell Pearce and the Employer Sanctions Act.

Why do they come?

Why do they stay?

Here is one reason, from Mercedes Sosa, the late Argentine cantora, and Puerto Ricans Calle 13.

I don’t need to say anything else, except you may need a Kleenex.

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.