06/18/12 Last Friday, President Obama took to the airwaves to announce a bold new deportation strategy for DREAM Act youth: effective immediately, DREAMers who meet certain criteria will be protected from deportation and eligible to apply for work permits. While commentators and editorial boards all over the nation applauded the long-awaited development, there were, of course, [...]
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06/06/12 Just when you think Sheriff Joe Arpaio can’t sink any lower, he does. Arpaio, as you’ll see in the video below, proudly compares his infamous Tent City to concentration camps: I already have a concentration camp. It’s called Tent City. Concentration camps in the United States? In 2012? The strangest thing is that he’s proud [...]
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06/04/12 We’ve been publishing a series of posts from the DREAMers of the Campaign for an American DREAM.  Last month, they set off from San Francisco to begin a 3,000-mile, 8-month+ walk to Washington, DC to call attention to the DREAM Act and the need for immigration reform. Today’s post is from Jonatan Martinez, a DREAMer from Georgia who recently [...]
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05/14/12 Perhaps one of the most notable things about the lawsuit the Department of Justice filed against Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio last week is its breadth.  Arpaio is being charged with quite a range of offenses, from mistreating Latino prisoners to mass racial profiling to intimidation of political opponents to violent misconduct.  The Associated Press today highlights [...]
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05/11/12 Yesterday, the DOJ filed a suit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio, America’s self-proclaimed “toughest sheriff,” after infamous Joe decided to be his usual belligerent self. Sheriff Joe has refused to comply with the Department of Justice’s terms after he was found to have “engage[d] in a pattern or practice of unconstitutional policing” and had “a chronic [...]
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05/10/12 The Department of Justice announced yesterday that it is filing a lawsuit against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, following a months-long delay during which “America’s Most Corrupt Sheriff” refused to reform his enforcement practices or agree to the independent oversight of a monitor. The development is the latest in a series of events that began [...]
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04/26/12 “If there’s one thing that we can all agree on, it’s that half of us will not agree on even that,” starts off Stephen Colbert on his popular late-night TV show’s segment, The Word, wittily entitled “United, We Can’t Stand Them.” Rumor has it that immigrants are pyromaniacal, highly-contagious, economy-wrecking terrorists. And now, according to [...]
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04/13/12 News about Andrew Thomas, the Maricopa County attorney disbarred this week for being Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s corrupt partner in crime is really getting pickup.  We’ve written about the disbarring, but not the reason for the disbar. Talking Points Memo sums up the story of Thomas and Arpaio, the nightmare-team duo who used their positions of [...]
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04/11/12 Russell Pearce—former Arizona state senator, sponsor of arch-anti-immigrant bill SB 1070—defeated last fall in a historic recall election. Paul Babeu—hardline anti-immigrant sheriff of Pinal County, famous for the “complete the danged fence” ad he shot with John McCain—tarred this year for certain…indiscretions, and now on the defensive with both his current post and his race [...]
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04/10/12 Breaking news from Phoenix: Former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas and his onetime deputy, Lisa Aubuchon, were stripped of their law licenses today as a disciplinary panel handed down the toughest sanctions possible for ethical violations in a case that attracted national interest. The panel also suspended Rachel Alexander, another Thomas deputy, from practicing law [...]
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04/09/12 The Kansas City Star today has an in-depth article on Kris Kobach, the sometimes-Kansas Secretary of State who is so passionately anti-immigrant that he works overtime in service of it. Kobach is Kansas Secretary of the State by day, a job which the Star notes “should be one of the quietest jobs in government.”  But by [...]
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04/04/12 Negotiations between the U.S. Department of Justice and Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio have broken down. DOJ, which accused Arpaio of racial discrimination, says the Sheriff is "wasting time and not negotiating in good faith."
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03/21/12 Arizona's Sheriff Joe Arpaio might call himself "America's Toughest Sheriff," but he was first to blink yesterday after a serious standoff with undocumented youth from the DREAM Activist movement.
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03/21/12 Arizona's Sheriff Joe Arpaio might call himself "America's Toughest Sheriff," but he was first to blink yesterday after a serious standoff with undocumented youth from the DREAM Activist movement.
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03/02/12 Breaking news: Arizona's Sheriff Joe Arpaio is not just extremist, vindictive, and corrupt—he's a full-fledged, flaming, deny-the-facts birther as well. We wrote, last September, about how he assigned a five-member "Cold Case Posse" to investigate the authenticity of Barack Obama's birth certificate.
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02/28/12 We've compared Arizona's Sheriff Joe Arpaio to the hottest girl at the prom, but at the moment he's sounding like the dumped boyfriend who never quite realized that his girl doesn't love him.
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02/22/12 When the Republican presidential candidates debate in Mesa, Arizona tonight, the grassroots group Citizens for a Better Arizona will be ready for them—with an ad drawing attention to infamous Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and calling for his resignation.
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01/05/12 Yesterday was the deadline for Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio to indicate whether he would cooperate with the United States Department of Justice civil rights investigation of his department. Well, Arpaio did respond -- in fairly typical Sheriff Joe fashion with some bravado and attitude
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12/20/11 A Gulf War veteran has been left brain-dead after being arrested, restrained, and tasered by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department, says the Arizona Republic, a case which starkly highlights last week's news about "America's Toughest Sheriff" Joe Arpaio.
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12/19/11 While immigration advocates and immigrant communities across the nation celebrated last week's news about Sheriff Arpaio, members of the anti-immigrant crowd were quick to circle the wagons and align themselves with the wrong side of the law. Anti-immigrant "leader" Rep. Steve King (R-IA) released no less than a video proclaiming his steadfast support of the Sheriff
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12/15/11 As the Department of Justice's investigation has shown, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's discriminatory practices and abuses of power have made him a Bull Connor for the 21st century. Below are some of the highlights--or rather, lowlights--of Arpaio's career.
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12/15/11 The United States Department of Justice took a strong and welcome step towards ending Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's reign of terror. Thomas Perez, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil rights, went right into Arpaio's backyard to deliver this report, holding a press conference in Phoenix to release the news about Arpaio's unconstitutional and discriminatory practices.
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12/15/11 Today, the Department of Justice will release the results of its investigation of the notoriously anti-immigrant Sheriff of Maricopa Country: Joe Arpaio. Via ABC 15 in Phoenix, at 10 AM MT/1 PM ET, the United States Department of Justice will announce the results of its investigation of Arpaio.
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11/28/11 Earlier this fall, we wrote about the hoops that the 2012 GOP presidential candidates were jumping through to earn the endorsement of notoriously anti-immigrant Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Now, in what the Atlantic calls "one of the many mind-bending absurdities of the 2012 race," Arpaio has chosen a fellow dance partner: Texas Governor Rick Perry.
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09/20/11 Joe Arpaio, the notoriously anti-immigration Sheriff from Maricopa County has established himself as a birther. He's assigned his "Cold Case Posse" to investigate President Obama's birth certificate.
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09/16/11 These days Maricopa County's Sheriff Joe Arpaio is like the hottest girl at prom: everyone wants a piece of him, and suitors have come a-wooing. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) swung by Arizona yesterday, hoping to get Arpaio's endorsement for her presidential bid.
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07/11/11 Arizona State Senate President Russell Pearce (R-Mesa) rose to national prominence championing SB 1070, the state's infamous anti-immigration law that spawned a series of copycat bills nationwide after it was signed into law last April.
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