A Move in the Right Direction

By Noquel A. Matos

PHOENIX- The Immigration and Custom Enforcement agency finally limited Maricopa Country Sherriff Joe Arpaio’s deputies’ ability to enforce federal immigration law. The department equipped with 160 federally trained deputies to conduct immigration arrests, the largest in the country, have widely terrorized the local immigrant community with high levels of racial profiling, for which it’s under investigation by the Justice Department division of Human Rights.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio known for being a fierce enforcer of immigration law in his county says the decision will not deter his mission of deporting undocumented immigrants. If necessary he’ll take them to the border himself, he stated.

The decision to limit the immigration hardliner’s power to perform immigration arrests comes from the White House. Most likely as Obama’s response to a letter sent by the Hispanic Immigration Caucus denouncing the abuses committed under this program that allows local officers to enforce immigration law.

However, this is not a call to victory yet, it’s just a move in the right direction.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio as many others biased officials with special interest in carrying out deportations still hold uncheck power to have their way. They still have room to carry on with their invested private interests under state laws.

“Let them all go brag, they took away the Sheriff’s authority. Let them all do that. That doesn’t bother me. I don’t have an ego. I will continue doing the same thing,” Sheriff Arpaio warned upon finding the federal agency decision to cut his notorious program.

Although, Arpaio’s deputies’ power to make field arrest was limited, they still have the power to question inmates in jail about their immigration status, which concerns immigrant right advocates that know the Sheriff investment in cleansing his county of undocumented immigrant or anyone who look like them:

''All he has to do [now] is get people to the jail, rather than being able to question them about their immigration status on the street,'' Joan Friedman, immigration policy director for the National Immigration Law Center, predicted.

Until a federal immigration reform is passed in Congress that overhauls immigration law enforcement nationally, we’ll keep seeing abuses of power in immigration law enforcement on xenophobic and racist states.