Joe Arpaio shrugs it all off – including allegations about contacts with neo-Nazi white supremacists. LARA MARLOWEreports from Phoenix
WHAT KIND of law enforcement officer boasts of using “the world’s only female chain gang” to bury dead indigents? Of housing convicts in furnace temperatures next to the city dump? Of feeding his prisoners 20-cent meals and forcing them to write home on postcards bearing his picture?
Joe Arpaio is the rogue sheriff of Maricopa County, the largest in Arizona, encompassing the state capital, Phoenix.
He has been elected five times since 1993. Two weeks ago, he decided not to stand for governor because he is involved in a dispute with his own board of supervisors, two of whom he has had arrested. He did not want to give the board the satisfaction of replacing him.
Arpaio says the federal government is investigating him “for alleged civil rights violations, abuse of power, all that. Do you think I’m worried? Why would you be worried if you did nothing wrong?”
Meanwhile, the sheriff remains the most prominent figure in Arizona’s crusade to rid itself of undocumented Mexicans.
If he had entered the gubernatorial race, he might well have won. Candidates from all over the country seek Arpaio’s endorsement. The right-wing Tea Party love him, and his local ally, JD Hayworth, could defeat Senator John McCain next November.
The Sheriff thinks SB1070, the immigration law that is turning Arizona into a pariah, is great, but it won’t change much for him, he says, ensconced in his fortress-like 19th-floor office in downtown Phoenix.
In certain circumstances, a legal exception known as 287g enables local law enforcement to act in place of federal agents.
Late last year, the Obama administration yanked Arpaio’s 287g authorisation.
“Under the 287g programme, we arrested and charged 318,000 people, starting in April 2007,” Arpaio says. “Out of that, we detected 35,000 were here illegally, which means they have to stay in jail.”
Arpaio spews statistics: “We average 8,000 to 10,000 prisoners on a given day. About 30 per cent of them are Hispanic, 19 per cent of the people in jail are here illegally. If they weren’t here, we wouldn’t have those crimes. Fifty-five illegals in jail have been charged with murder . . .”
The Obama administration’s assault on Arpaio’s authority “doesn’t make any difference”, he says, “because I’m still doing the same thing”.
Two state laws, one on human smuggling, the other on employer sanctions, enable him to get round the loss of 287g.
“Under the human smuggling law, we just arrested 61 people in the last 24 hours, coming into this county,” Arpaio says. “We charged them with smuggling and co-conspiracy. We’re the only ones doing that. We’ve arrested more than 2,000 people in the last two or three years [in addition to the above-mentioned 318,000].
“It’s a class-four felony, which means they can’t get out on bond. We arrest the people in the vehicle that have paid the smuggler and we charge them with the same crime.”
On May 28, the Obama administration asked the Supreme Court to void Arizona’s two-year-old law on employer sanctions, on the grounds it infringes federal prerogatives.
Law SB1070 may fall on the same grounds. So the feds don’t want Arpaio to do it?
“Well, Sheriff Arpaio is doing it anyway,” he says.
The sanctions law has given Arpaio the pretext to raid 35 workplaces. He arrested 18 illegals in two recent raids on McDonald’s and more at the Burlington coat factory last week.
“It had nothing to do with employer sanctions, but we still accomplished the same mission, because we arrested people who were working illegally,” he says.
Arpaio uses his 2,700-strong “posse” on raids.
“When you watch the old western movies,” he explains, “the sheriff would swear-in private citizens and make a posse and they’d go catch the horse thief. Under the constitution, I have the authority to swear-in private citizens to help me do my job.
“ I have 57 different posse organisations: airplanes, jeeps, motorcycles, horses . . . We train them, 500 with guns.”
The sheriff shrugs off allegations about contacts with neo-Nazi white supremacists. A photographer once took a picture of him talking to a young man he didn’t know, he says.
However, video on the internet, from a May 2009 rally of Arpaio supporters, shows demonstrators shouting “Heil” as they give Nazi salutes and stamp on a Mexican flag. “Deport all illegal scum”, says one placard.
Arpaio bristles when I suggest that even with 10 per cent unemployment, Americans won’t do the low-paying jobs performed by undocumented Mexicans.
“I don’t want to get into racial stuff, but if you go down south, if you look at who’s cleaning hotels, what race do you think is cleaning in these southern areas?” he asks.
“The black people are doing that. They’re even US citizens.”
Arizona’s chief persecutor seems to have a persecution complex. Arpaio says his earlier career, as a soldier in Korea, a cop, then two decades with the Drug Enforcement Agency, endowed him with invaluable experience.
“It’s sad, after spending 30 years dedicating my life with gun battles all over the world as a federal official, that now they’re going after me as the elected sheriff because they don’t like me enforcing the immigration laws,” he sighs.
Woe betide Arpaio’s prisoners. “I’m the only one who uses the word ‘punishment’,” Arpaio says. “Everybody else wants to ‘rehabilitate’ and ‘educate’.”
One of his first acts as sheriff was to buy surplus Korean War tents to house prisoners.
“They’re next to the dump and the dog pound and the waste disposal plant,” he says with relish, admitting that the stench can be overpowering.
“It gets to be 140 degrees in the summer. I’ve had a half million people come through the tents, and none of ’em died yet. I shut everybody up when they complain. I tell them our men and women are fighting for our country and they’re living in tents.”
Arpaio is particularly proud of his 10-year-old female chain gang, “the first in the history of the world”. The women wear striped prison uniforms.
“I hook women together and put them on the streets where everybody can see them. They bury the dead bodies at the county cemetery [he chuckles in mid-sentence] once a week.”
Last November, Mexican television broadcast an interview with Alma Minerva Chacon, a deported migrant who said she gave birth shackled to a hospital bed in Phoenix.
“I think she was just [shackled by] one leg,” Arpaio says, adding that “there’s nothing unconstitutional to restraining people when they’re in hospital under guard.”
Arpaio’s male prisoners must wear pink boxer shorts. “They were stealing the white ones, to sell when they got out,” he says, “and they hate pink.”
A souvenir version, with his sheriff’s badge and signature stamped on them, goes for $15 a pair to help finance Arpaio’s “posse”.
Arpaio’s parents immigrated from Naples, Italy, in 1917. Why does a nation of immigrants now view new arrivals as criminals, I ask him.
“Because they violate the law,” Arpaio snaps.
“My mother and father came here legally.”
I mention the Jesuit priest who a few days ago quoted Matthew 25 to me, about helping the poor, hungry, sick and imprisoned.
Arpaio is a Catholic who has refused to transport female prisoners to the abortion clinic, but he doesn’t like me bringing religion into our discussion.
“I think there’s something in the Bible that says you should obey the laws too,” he snarls.