America’s Tough­est Sher­iff?
Arizona’s Joe Arpaio cracks down on immigrants—and women bear the brunt.
Pub­lished in Ms. mag­a­zine May 2010

Mari­copa County sher­iff Joe Arpaio has crafted a con­tro­ver­sial rep­u­ta­tion as a hard-line immi­gra­tion enforcer. Now, with Arizona’s pas­sage of the harsh­est anti-immigrant law in the coun­try, Arpaio’s con­tentious polic­ing efforts have legal backing.

For years, Arpaio and the Mari­copa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) have made local head­lines for rou­tinely raid­ing Latino neigh­bor­hoods and work­sites and arrest­ing scores of Lati­nos they sus­pect of being undoc­u­mented. But it is women who expe­ri­ence the worst of the immi­gra­tion deten­tion system.

When deputies arrested Ale­jan­dra Alvarez in a work­site raid last year, they used such exces­sive force that she dis­lo­cated her jaw against a wall. Another offi­cer hit her with a clip­board while another, she says, repeat­edly told her “You are noth­ing.” Despite repeated requests for med­ical atten­tion, her injuries were not treated until after her release, nearly three months later. By then she required surgery and suf­fered from seri­ous com­pli­ca­tions.
Her only crime, she says, was work­ing to sup­port her four young children.

Dur­ing such raids, deputies don’t dis­crim­i­nate based on sex but, as Ale­jan­dra dis­cov­ered, Arpaio’s increas­ingly aggres­sive immi­gra­tion enforce­ment tac­tics uniquely impact women.

“No one can under­stand the injus­tices I saw inside,” Ale­jan­dra says. “The way they treat preg­nant women, and the way they treat the undocumented…And I was there just three short months.”

Alejandra’s story is not unique. Last spring, when Maria Mar­tinez was arrested in her front yard for pos­sess­ing a “fake” ID (actu­ally an expired Cal­i­for­nia state driver’s license), six MCSO deten­tion offi­cers allegedly broke her arm while try­ing to force her fin­ger­print onto a vol­un­tary depor­ta­tion order. Last Octo­ber, when Alma Cha­con was col­lared for an out­stand­ing traf­fic vio­la­tion, she was forced to give birth in hand and leg shack­les before a judge released her on her own recog­ni­zance – a prac­tice pro­hib­ited in Ari­zona state pris­ons, but legal in ICE deten­tion centers.

“Because they may seem more frag­ile or more timid, the offi­cers use intim­i­da­tion to pres­sure them to sign vol­un­tary depar­ture orders,” explains Lydia Guz­man, pres­i­dent of the immi­grant rights coali­tion Somos Amer­ica. “Phys­i­cally, they are abused. They’re more vul­ner­a­ble to this kind of treatment.”

Guz­man, whose work includes pro­vid­ing direct assis­tance to immi­grants who are unlaw­fully detained, helped Ale­jan­dra, Maria and Alma obtain legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion and, now armed with good lawyers, all three women have suc­cess­fully chal­lenged their depor­ta­tions and are suing the sheriff’s office.

Being sued, how­ever, is noth­ing new to Arpaio, who spent the last six years in lit­i­ga­tion with the ACLU in a vain effort to restrict inmates’ abor­tion rights — in spite of the fact that there have been only 10 requests for abor­tion ser­vices in 14 years. The ACLU has five other suits against him or office, as well, includ­ing one that chal­lenges a con­tro­ver­sial new law that cat­e­gor­i­cally denies bail to undoc­u­mented immi­grants guilty of com­mit­ting a class-4 felony – in Ari­zona, that con­sti­tutes pos­sess­ing a fake ID.

Accord­ing to Alessan­dra Soler Meetze, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the ACLU of Ari­zona, this law is com­monly applied to undoc­u­mented immi­grants who are stopped for traf­fic vio­la­tions, and who are then arrested for pre­sent­ing a false driver’s license.

“Nor­mally women would not stay in jail cells for minor civil traf­fic infrac­tions,” Soler Meetze says. “But because they’re undoc­u­mented, once they get in the sys­tem, they end up stay­ing for much longer peri­ods of time.”

And the longer women stay in jail, the more likely they are to expe­ri­ence abuse, suf­fer from mal­nu­tri­tion, or develop health com­pli­ca­tions. Human Rights Watch and the Inspec­tor General’s Office at the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity have both released reports doc­u­ment­ing and crit­i­ciz­ing the low qual­ity of med­ical care, high preva­lence of abuse, and ris­ing num­ber of deaths within women’s deten­tion centers.

While the mis­treat­ment of women detainees is a national prob­lem, it has proven par­tic­u­larly per­ni­cious in Ari­zona, where Arpaio’s celebrity has drawn con­sid­er­able atten­tion, and a new law passed in April will sub­ject Lati­nos to even greater scrutiny—and jail time. The con­tro­ver­sial mea­sure requires law enforce­ment to check the immi­gra­tion sta­tus of any­one they per­ceive as “rea­son­ably sus­pi­cious” and arrest those with­out doc­u­men­ta­tion. Once imple­mented, women can be arrested with­out ever hav­ing com­mit­ted a crime.

“Ari­zona stands out as a real test­ing ground for many of these hash, anti-immigrant mea­sures,” says Meetze. “Other states start to copy the laws they see passed here in Arizona.”

Harsh new laws, in com­bi­na­tion with Arpaio’s increas­ingly aggres­sive tac­tics, have cre­ated a cli­mate of fear among Latino pop­u­la­tions in Ari­zona. Because they are afraid of being arrested, many immi­grant women now refuse to report even vio­lent crimes com­mit­ted against them, accord­ing to Guz­man. Her hot­line, Respect Respeto, reg­u­larly takes calls from wit­nesses or vic­tims of domes­tic vio­lence, gang bru­tal­ity, and sex­ual abuse who fear call­ing the police.

“Arpaio thinks he’s cre­ated safer neigh­bor­hoods, but he’s done the oppo­site,” Guz­man says. “He has nar­rowed down the num­ber of peo­ple who can report a crime, and it makes our neigh­bor­hoods worse than ever.”

Last spring the Depart­ment of Jus­tice began an inves­ti­ga­tion of the Mari­copa County Sheriff’s Office to deter­mine whether Arpaio and his offi­cers are guilty of racial pro­fil­ing and abuse of power, but that hasn’t slowed the sher­iff down. While he con­tin­ues his raids and is now talk­ing about run­ning for gov­er­nor of Ari­zona, women immi­grants con­tinue liv­ing in fear — despite Obama’s assur­ances that immi­gra­tion reform is on the horizon.

And once the new law is imple­mented this July, Arpaio’s inevitable enforce­ment of it will exac­er­bate an already dread­ful situation.

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