IMMIGRATIONICE’s Heavy‑Handed Immigration Enforcement Was Tried Once Before – by Arizona’s Notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio in the Early 2000s
From 2006 to 2017, Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, implemented his own immigration detention program, instructing deputies to detain anyone who did not carry a valid identification and did not speak English. One U.S. Department of Justice attorney characterized Arpaio as overseeing “the worst pattern of racial profiling by a law enforcement agency in U.S. history.”
For the past 13 years, Maricopa County in Arizona has attempted to reform its sheriff’s department after Joe Arpaio made it into a national flash point for extreme immigration tactics. After a legal immigrant sued Arpaio and the county Sheriff’s Office, a federal district court ruled in 2015 that Arpaio and his deputies relied on racial profiling to target Latinos.
Arpaio was at the center of that suit. From 2006 to 2017, he implemented his own immigration detention program, instructing deputies to detain anyone who did not carry a valid identification and did not speak English. One U.S. Department of Justice attorney characterized Arpaio as overseeing “the worst pattern of racial profiling by a law enforcement agency in U.S. history.”
Federal oversight has since aimed to reform the sheriff’s department and improve trust with the county’s Latino residents, which had been destroyed under Arpaio’s tenure.
As a historian of U.S. immigration, I believe Arpaio’s immigration detention methods are clearly echoed in the hardline immigration policies devised by presidential aide Stephen Miller. That’s evident in actions by immigration agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection that have been described as inhumane by some lawmakers and civil rights groups.
A Blueprint for ICE Facilities
From his election to sheriff in 1993 until 2017, Arpaio made constant headlines for his creation of a tent jail and his heavy-handed immigration enforcement tactics.
Using surplus army tents from the Korean War to house up to 1,700 inmates, Arpaio built Tent City in August 1993 to address overcrowding in Phoenix jails. By the time the jail closed in 2017, Sheriff Paul Penzone estimated that running Tent City cost taxpayers US$8.5 million annually.
Tent City was initially used for detaining criminals, but after 2009, Arpaio used the facility for housing detained immigrants.
News reports said Arpaio forced inmates to wear pink underwear and often fed them expired food and undrinkable water. The tents did little to shield inmates from the Arizona desert, where temperatures rose to 130 degrees Fahrenheit, (54 degrees celsius) at times. Tent City stirred a national uproar.
Starting in 2006, Arpaio and Maricopa County sheriffs engaged in a pattern of “unlawful discriminatory police conduct directed at Hispanic persons,” according to Deputy Assistant Attorney General Mark Kappelhoff. During these operations, he directed deputies to detain people suspected as being undocumented immigrants without legal immigration authorization.
