New Atty Gen. To Stop Immigration Crackdowns
Under Barack Obama’s new attorney general the Justice Department will likely halt an Arizona sheriff’s crackdown on illegal immigration by claiming it constitutes racial profiling, according to legal experts and a mayor who offers illegal aliens sanctuary.
The high-profile arrests by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department were actually requested by numerous business owners and city leaders desperate to remedy the illegal immigration crisis that has overwhelmed their border state. In the absence of federal enforcement, the department has stepped in to rid the area of dozens of illegal immigrants—some violent criminals—who should have been deported long ago.
The sheriff’s department also restored much-needed law and order in a Phoenix business district (36th & Thomas) rife with solicitation, trespassing, loitering and public health ordinance violations long ignored by the city’s police department simply because the perpetrators were illegal immigrants.
But illegal alien advocates and Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon have cried racism and ordered the FBI and Justice Department to investigate Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio for violating the civil rights of illegal aliens during arrests. In April Mayor Gordon wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey asking the Department of Justice to investigate “discriminatory harassment” and “improper” stops, searches and arrests by Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies who patrol the metropolitan area.
No action has been taken by the feds and deputies have continued their effort to curb illegal immigration. That is highly likely to change under soon-to-be Attorney General Eric Holder, who investigated numerous local police departments for racial profiling while he helped run Bill Clinton’s Justice Department.
Legal experts assure that Holder will scrutinize Arpaio’s crackdowns and probably launch a racial profiling investigation that could bring them to an end. Mayor Gordon, whose demand was blown off by Attorney General Mukasey, is ecstatic that the incoming administration will probably support his illegal immigrant sanctuary city. “The ball for civil rights has started rolling,” according to the mayor.
