Wow: DOJ goes after Sheriff Arpaio for enforcing immigration law

The inmates are running the asylum. Literally.

In Stolen Sovereignty, I warned about judges granting citizen rights to those who are in the country without the consent of the people and providing them standing to sue for affirmative benefits. Now, in the latest legal assault on Arizona, law enforcement, and sovereignty, illegal aliens have succeeded in getting a radical judge and the Obama Administration to collude against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and charge him with criminal contempt for enforcing federal immigration and national sovereignty in his jurisdiction, which has been devastated by the effects of illegal immigration. He faces up to six months in jail if convicted of contempt. Meanwhile, the most violent criminal aliens remain at large in the state. This is Orwellian beyond imagination.

In August, Judge G. Murray Snow of the U.S. District Court of Arizona took the unprecedented step of referring Arpaio for misdemeanor criminal contempt charges for allegedly not following a prior court injunction against his police tactics of apprehending those reasonably suspected of being in his jurisdiction illegally. The injunction stems from a 2007 class-action lawsuit brought by the ACLU and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) accusing the Maricopa County Sherriff of racial profiling — the golden goose of liberal litigation against law enforcement. After soliciting federal officials to take action against a sitting sheriff protecting one of the most dangerous jurisdictions, the Obama DOJ took up the mantle and brought charges against Arpaio the day before early voting began in his race for reelection. The charges were brought up at a hearing last Tuesday, called for by Judge Susan Bolton who herself is a notorious liberal activist who has sided with illegal aliens over Arizona sovereignty for years.

When the charges were announced, the Arizona Republic observed the unprecedented nature of this case:

As I note in my book, our Founders are rolling over in their graves at the sight of a sheriff being placed on trial for taking common sense steps to protect his state’s sovereignty and applying federal law in cases of reasonable suspicion laws over which Congress, not the judiciary, has plenary authority. While Arpaio admits to mistakenly violating the injunction, the broader question is how a federal court can issue an injunction against sovereignty laws of a nation using … you guessed it … the Fourteenth Amendment. Arpaio was acting according to federal law, which requires the federal government to respond to state inquiries on an individual’s immigration status [8 U. S. C. §1373c]. Yet, he is potentially facing jail time while illegal aliens chanted “Si se puede! Si se puede!” outside the court house. This is an image and a perverse juxtaposition even Orwell could never have imagined.

A number of important observations are in order:

1. While thousands of criminal aliens are being released onto the streets of Arizona, Sheriff Arpaio is the one who is facing the prospect of jail time. There is something fundamentally wrong when a state like Arizona is being destroyed by a foreign invasion and local elected officials are hamstrung from defending the state, even though they are following federal law. At the same time, sanctuary cities that thwartfederal immigration law, are being rewarded by the federal judiciary.
2. While illegal aliens get standing in court to sue over the enforcement of federal immigration laws — as we covered last week — Arpaio and other law enforcement officers were never able to get standing to sue Obama for violating federal immigration law when he implemented the DACA amnesty. As Janice Rogers Brown wrote in her concurring opinion in the Arpaio case where she reluctantly accepted the precedent on standing issues, “if an elected Sheriff responsible for the security of a county with a population larger than twenty-one states cannot bring suit, individual litigants will find it even more difficult to bring similar challenges.” By individual litigants, she meant taxpayers suing on behalf of American sovereignty, not illegal aliens suing to remain in this country against the national will.
3. The legacy of the Supreme Court’s decision in Arizona v. United States — in which the court gutted the state’s ability to protect itself — will make life harder for Arpaio’s defense and any law enforcement agency that wants to protect sovereignty.[1] That decision, which was authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, was shredded by Justice Antonin Scalia who was so irate he read his dissent from the bench. He warned that the court’s injunction against SB 1070 “deprives States of what most would consider the defining characteristic of sovereignty: the power to exclude from the sovereign’s territory people who have no right to be there.” “Neither the Constitution itself nor even any law passed by Congress supports this result,” wrote an indignant Justice Scalia.[2]
4. How ironic that the courts are now using the Fourteenth Amendment to steal the sovereignty of the nation and the states. House Judiciary Committee Chairman James F. Wilson said during the debate over the 14th Amendment in 1866 that the addition to the Constitution established “no new right” and declared no new principle: “[I]t is not the object of this bill to establish new rights, but to protect and enforce those which belong to every citizen.”[3] Tragically, that amendment — which was designed to protect existing rights of American citizens — is being used to disenfranchise the citizenry at the hands of illegal aliens!
5. Consider the damage wrought upon Arizona by illegal immigration as the sheriff who is protecting his people faces jail time. Here are some key facts from chapter five of my book:
   
   

• As of 2013, it was estimated that there were 630,700 illegal aliens residing in Arizona (including American-born anchor babies).[4] That is a population of foreign invaders larger than the total population of any single colony at the time of our Founding. [5] 
• Over 10% of the state’s public school population is comprised of illegal alien children.[6] When coupled with the fiscal strain of health care and incarceration, the total cost of illegal immigration is $2.4 billion a year.[7]  
• The Arizona Department of Corrections estimates that illegal aliens comprise 17% of its prison population and 22% of all felony defendants in Maricopa County. [8]
• Arizona has become the drug smuggling capital of the country. From 2010-2015, heroin seizures in Arizona have increased by 207%, while Methamphetamine seizures grew by 310%. [9] In FY 2014, there were more pounds of Marijuana seized in the Tucson corridor than every other border sector combined.[10]

Arpaio has a grim road ahead of him — as does the entire state of Arizona — if Congress doesn’t strip the courts of their foray into immigration law. Judge Bolton was the original district judge who placed the injunction on SB 1070, Arizona’s enforcement law. The Ninth Circuit is … well … the Ninth Circuit. And Roberts has already agreed with the five leftists on the court that states must follow the whims of international law and the Obama administration instead of congressional statutes.[11]

Scalia used to lament that states would never have joined the union had they been told they would be crushed by the federal courts. As Scalia concluded in his dissent in Arizona, “if securing its territory in this fashion is not within the power of Arizona, we should cease referring to it as a sovereign State.”[12]

Who ever said crime doesn’t pay and cheaters never prosper?