Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who rose to national fame because of his aggressive policies regarding illegal immigration and criminals, has gone from enforcer of the law to convicted criminal. His crime, according to U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton’s ruling Monday, is criminal contempt of court for willfully violating a federal judge’s order to stop detaining suspected illegal immigrants, a practice the judge condemned as “racial profiling.”
Judge Bolton’s ruling carries a sentence of up to six months in confinement, but Arpaio says he’s going to appeal and press for a trial. The Arizona Republic provides some context for the ruling against Arpaio’s “immigration round-ups”:
In December 2011, amid a long-running racial profiling case, U.S. District Court Judge G. Murray Snow ordered Arpaio’s deputies to stop holding individuals solely on the belief they were in the country illegally. They only were to detain those who were accused of a state crime.
But Arpaio’s deputies continued to do so for at least 17 months thereafter. During the bench trial, witnesses testified that 171 individuals were illegally apprehended and then turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or to the Border Patrol.
Arpaio has defended his action by arguing that Judge Snow’s injunction against the “round-ups” was unclear, and that rather than being a case of “willful intent” to defy the order, Arpaio was simply not clear about what he could or could not do. “The only one who understood what Judge Snow meant was Judge Snow himself,” said Defense attorney Dennis Wilenchik.
But on Monday, Bolton ruled against that defense, insisting that Snow “issued a clear and definite order enjoining Defendant from detaining persons for further investigation without reasonable suspicion that a crime has been or is being committed” and that Arpaio “willfully violated the order by failing to do anything to ensure his subordinates’ compliance and by directing them to continue to detain persons for whom no criminal charges could be filed.”
While on the opposite end of the spectrum, the case is similar to the case against “sanctuary cities” in that Arpaio was ruled as defying federal law in his handling of illegal immigrants. About a decade ago, Arpaio took the lead as an enforcer of the state’s illegal immigration laws and began stopping those suspected of being illegal immigrants, a practice known as “pretextual” stops. Many of those detained were turned over to federal immigration authorities:
Many of those taken into custody were not accused of violating a state crime, but only of living in the country illegally. Once they were detained, deputies would turn over the individuals to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement or Border Patrol officials, who would initiate deportation proceedings.
Arpaio’s enforcement practices were ruled to be “racial profiling” in 2013 by Judge Snow, who went on to expand the case in 2015 to determine if Arpaio violated his injunction. Snow ruled that Arpaio and three of his aides were guilty of civil contempt then referred them to federal prosecutors, who dropped the charges against all but Arpaio and decided to only go after him for violating the preliminary injunction.