Introduction
Since 2007, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Maricopa County Arizona sheriff has been in and out of court hearings for the racial profiling case against him. The local police throughout Maricopa County have been known to behave in racist ways towards anyone who may appear to be Mexican/Hispanic/Latino. The purpose of this paper is to inform readers of the problem faced by Maricopa County residents due to the enactment of SB1070. Latino/Hispanic residents currently live in fear of being stopped by police. They worry they may be discriminated against, wrongfully accused of a crime, harmed physically, or worse.
In order to gain an overall idea of racial profiling occurrences, I have been casually discussing the issue with non-White citizens within Maricopa County. I have also completed two separate interviews, which provided two different perspectives on the concern. One of the interview participants is a Native American, Navajo, who had experienced racial profiling first hand. The other, an elderly woman from Italy who had been living in the United States most of her life, and in Arizona for over 20 years.
Overview
In 1996, the Immigration and Nationality Act was amended to allow the feds to deputize state and local law enforcement granting them the ability to arrest and detain immigrants who were undocumented. This 1996 amendment was referred to as 287 (g). Arizona enacted both SB 1070 and HB 2162 addressing immigration in 2010. Under these laws, new requirements of the state along with new crimes and penalties related to the enforcement of said laws were implemented (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2015). SB 1070 created a requirement for police officers to verify legal citizenship during traffic stops in which reasonable suspicion applies. This has caused debates all over the United States due to its controversial nature. A couple of other issues come into play; racism/discrimination (in the form of profiling), and how these laws affect other minority groups such as Native Americans and those of Middle Eastern descent (Nier, Gaertner, Nier, & Dovidio, 2012).
Actual Cases of Racial Profiling
More than one account of an individual detained under suspicion of being in the United States illegally has had treacherous outcomes. There are a few racial profiling cases, which are almost unbelievable. The first is a male, who wished to remain unnamed. This man went inside of a convenient store for water, while his parents waited outside. When he heard police officers yelling at them for proof of legal citizenship, he rushed outside only to also be yelled at for his paperwork. He was a third generation United States citizen. The next case involves another man who requested to be anonymous had been living in the United States without papers for 21 years. He had a steady job as a construction worker, two children and a wife; they went on a camping trip at which the Sheriff’s department was called because the non-white family showed up. In the view of his six-year-old son, the man was thrown down, face pushed into the ground, and he was pepper-sprayed and cuffed while using his hair to raise his head up. He was deported after spending a few weeks in Durango (Bogado, 2015).
Celia Alejandra Alvarez works for landscaping company. Maricopa County Sheriff officers raided the company and, according to Bogado (2015), the officers broke Alvarez’s jaw. While she was being held for three months in detention, she was denied proper medical care. Her jaw sill is not back to normal even after she had surgery. Apparently providing proper, often much needed, medical care to those awaiting deportation is just not something Arpaio feels like doing (Bogado, 2015).
Issues/Concerns
In Maricopa County Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio is well known to treat immigrants harshly. The jail he created, Tent City, is located outdoors, for the most part without walls or ability to heat or cool the facility. Summertime in Phoenix, Arizona is nothing nice; temperatures can reach above 110-degrees. Arpaio has referred to Tent City as his “concentration camp” (Picker, 2013).
Sheriff Joe Arpaio also initiates business raids so he can hunt down anyone without proper documentation, in order to charge them with identity theft (Picker, 2013). Detained immigrants can remain in detention for months, sometimes even years, at a time while trying to defend their case. Picker (2013) asserts that the detention centers used for immigrants are often
“run by the same corporations that have made billions off
of incarcerating victims of the war on drugs, such as the
GEO group and Corrections Corporation of America, the
largest private prison corporation in the world, which in
2009 identified immigrant detention as the source of a
“significant portion” of its future revenue” (p. 48).
Progress
Many individuals, nationwide, who do not have documentation, have joined forces in order to create a human rights movement starting in Arizona. This movement gained much strength as the group made their way across the country towards the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. At the campaign offices of Barack Obama in 2012, undocumented youth risked being deported in order to demand being heard in debate for immigration. It must be noted that almost immediately following their sit-in at his campaign offices, the President announced providing temporary work permits for youth eligible for the Dream Act (Picker, 2013).
In the Courtroom
Due to the tactics used by Arpaio and his department, there has been an ongoing civil right investigation. This investigation is being conducted by the Department of Justice. Without providing a reason or any kind of explanation, in 2009 the Department of Homeland Security revoked the sheriff’s authority to make arrests under section 287(g). Arpaio and his agency were still permitted to check the legitimacy of one’s citizenship upon arrival to jail. Shortly after a press conference was held by Sheriff Joe Arpaio at which time, he had this to say:
"We have arrested 1,600 illegals that have not committed any
crime other than being here illegally," he boasted. "The secret is,
we're still going to do the same thing—we have the state laws,
and by the way, we'll still enforce the federal laws without the
oversight, the policy, the restrictions that they put on us" (Bogado, 2015).
In 2011, a pretrial hearing barred Joe Arpaio’s deputies from detaining people based only on suspicion that they are undocumented. Judge Snow requested investigator Robert Warshaw to look into the agency’s violation of this order while monitoring the Sheriff’s office. According to the lawyer defending Sheriff Arpaio and his agency, the sheriff’s officials failed to tell members of the smuggling squad that the order was set by the judge (Billeaud, 2014).
Former Deputy Ramon Charley Armendariz, witness during a 2012 trial, was arrested for having identifications and other items belonging to others along with evidence bags inside his home. Just before quitting his job with the department and committing suicide, he had implicated some of Arpaio’s immigrant smuggling squad members (Billeaud, 2014). Later, in 2013, key findings in a ruling that Sheriff Arpaio, and his deputies, committed racial profiling of those within the Hispanic/Latino were upheld in an appeals court (Billeaud, 2015).
Survey and Interviews
Based on passing conversations with non-White residents of Maricopa County, I have found that approximately half of non-White females have experienced some form of racial profiling and more than half of non-White men have. I asked a total of 10 males and 10 females of Latino/Hispanic descent if they had experienced racial profiling by the police within the past 12 months. Of the females, five said they had. Of the males, eight admitted to experiencing it at least once. One thing all of the twenty individuals asked had in common, is that regardless of whether or not they personally experienced an issue, they all knew multiple people who had.
The two interviews I conducted, one Native American male in his thirties, and female Italian immigrant in her seventies, were completed in person. I asked each individual five key questions and obtained thoughts on the topic from two completely different perspectives. The questions I asked where created to gain an understanding on one’s knowledge and thoughts related to the issue.
My male Native American interviewee had admitted to experiencing being racially profiled by the police on more than one occasion. His knowledge of the current situation is based on experience, and what is issued to by the media. He believe racial profiling to be a tool used by the police to apprehend, arrest, and possibly deport non-White residents out of the state of Arizona. When asked about the case status of Arpaio and his opinion on the media hyping it up, he expressed the belief that the media respects Arpaio and would likely distort the information based on their bias. When asked for possible solutions to the issue, he just stated his belief that it is racist and should not be allowed.
My female Italian immigrant interviewee had never experienced racial profiling by the police or anyone else. She stated that she believes the issue to be based on Arpaio’s personal racist agenda and that it is unfair for those who are harassed. She has been following the court case in her spare time and believes the media always make things seem more intense than they are. She also believes the media has respect for Arpaio. She asserted her strong hope that Arpaio is not allowed to get away with what he has done, and that a new sheriff is appointed soon. She also stated that throughout our entire planet, racism is out of control.
Conclusion
Nier, Gaertner, Nier, & Dovidio concluded that when combined with lack of comprehensive training and ineffective testing for detection of discrimination, the Arizona law is likely to result in numerous Latinos/Hispanics being targeted illegally based on their race (2012). It appears as though their conclusion was quite accurate, as individuals have been experiencing racial profiling. In another research conducted on immigrant health as affected by the immigration law, Rhodes, Mann, Simán, Eunyoung, Alonzo, Downs, & ... Hall found that a large amount of immigrants avoid health services, risking their own health along with the health of their family due to fear of deportation (2015).
Solutions beyond the obvious, removing Arpaio from office and overwriting the immigration laws are not very easy to come by. On one hand, you have to consider the possibility of breaking other pre-established federal and state laws. On the other, we must be careful not to enact any policies that could be used as a gateway to discriminative practices. Guidance to the right of immigrants and educating them on how to handle the situation when approached by officers/deputies is one way to help (Rhodes, Mann, Simán, Eunyoung, Alonzo, Downs, & ... Hall, 2015). Other solutions may come forward in the future, but for now, all we can do is advocate for the rights of humanity, regardless of skin color or ethnic/cultural background.
References
Billeaud, J. (2014). Arpaio's racial profiling case enters new phase. AP Top News Package,
Retrieved from http://web.a.ebscohost.com.lib.ottawa.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=25&sid=47281c70-1f53-44d0-bdd0-87fb509c5b50%40sessionmgr4004&hid=4114&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=nsm&AN=AP3d9be7aadbe74a768b6d60b1ea8d2ce9
Billeaud, J. (2015). Court upholds finding of racial profiling by Arizona sheriff. AP Top News
Package, Retrieved from http://web.a.ebscohost.com.lib.ottawa.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=26&sid=47281c70-1f53-44d0-bdd0-87fb509c5b50%40sessionmgr4004&hid=4114&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=nsm&AN=AP62d5d24f4b1945118e73a908f4de2570
Bogado, A. (2015). Racial profiling is being used in immigration checks. In N. Merino (Ed.),
Current Controversies. Racial Profiling. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press. (Reprinted from Mother Jones, 2010) Retrieved from http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/ovic/ViewpointsDetailsPage/ViewpointsDetailsWindow?failOverType=&query=&prodId=OVIC&windowstate=normal&contentModules=&display-query=&mode=view&displayGroupName=Viewpoints&limiter=&currPage=&disableHighlighting=false&displayGroups=&sortBy=&search_within_results=&p=OVIC&action=e&catId=&activityType=&scanId=&documentId=GALE%7CEJ3010929207&source=Bookmark&u=klnb_ottawauniv&jsid=9b7a9c6b8510b5acf62b20b6537d237a
National Conference of State Legislatures. (2015). Arizona's immigration enforcement laws.
Retrieved from www.ncsl.org/research/immigration/analysis-of-arizonas-immigration-law.aspx
Nier, J. A., Gaertner, S. L., Nier, C. L., & Dovidio, J. F. (2012). Can racial profiling be
avoided under Arizona immigration law? Lessons learned from subtle bias research and anti-discrimination law. Analyses Of Social Issues & Public Policy, 12(1), 5-20. doi:10.1111/j.1530-2415.2011.01248.x
Picker, C. (2013). Living in the shadow of SB 1070. Tikkun, 28(3), 47-48.
doi:10.1215/08879982-2307211
Rhodes, S. D., Mann, L., Simán, F. M., Eunyoung, S., Alonzo, J., Downs, M., & ... Hall, M. A.
(2015). The impact of local immigration enforcement policies on the health of immigrant Hispanics/Latinos in the United States. American Journal of Public Health, 105(2), 329-337. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2014.302218