Arpaio: Deputies taped feds ordering release

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Saturday he ordered his deputies to tape conversations with federal officials after a dispute over who called for the release of illegal immigrants arrested in a crime sweep.

Arpaio said a total of 13 illegal immigrants have been released — three on Thursday and 10 on Friday — after federal officials said their arrests didn’t fit new Department of Homeland Security policies and ordered the deputies to release them. The sheriff’s claim over the releases was initially contradicted by a Homeland Security official.

In the recording, multiple tracks detail conversations between deputies and ICE officials, according to the sheriff’s office. In a copy of the recording obtained by the Tribune from the sheriff’s office, deputies ask for permission to take individuals who have no criminal history into custody, but the full responses of federal officials can be difficult to discern. However, the official contacted by deputies can be heard advising MCSO not to take into custody those individuals who don’t have a criminal history.

Arpaio told his deputies on Friday to tape the conversations with federal officials to prove they had in fact ordered the releases.

“Our deputies, when they did contact ICE, taped the conversation,” Arpaio said at a press conference Saturday. “You will see that they’re the ones who decided to let them (illegal immigrants) go.”

A Homeland Security spokesman in Washington, D.C., previously said the opposite. “The determination to release these individuals lies solely within the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office,” Homeland Security spokesman Matthew Chandler said Friday. “ICE officials gave permission to the MCSO 287(g) officer to question the individuals and had no other engagement.”

Reached Saturday, Chandler disagreed with Arpaio’s most recent comments, and instead said the sheriff simply failed to follow proper procedure.

“On Friday night, the Sheriff’s Office was given specific instructions on how to institute immigration proceedings against any individuals suspected of being in this country illegally, however they declined to do so,” Chandler said Saturday in an e-mail to the Tribune. “These actions are disappointing and detract from immigration law enforcement efforts not only in Arizona, but throughout the rest of the country as well.”

Chandler went on to say that regarding the releases of three illegal immigrants on Thursday, “ICE gave the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office permission to interview the three individuals in question, arrest, and initiate removal proceedings — instead Sheriff Arpaio released them.”  

Arpaio has said Homeland Security breached a promise that he could operate under an existing agreement that allows him to enforce immigration law.

Homeland Security is requiring all local police agencies with existing 287(g) agreements to sign new ones within the next three months that are in accordance with new policies and department objectives or else lose their authority.

Local agents with the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement told deputies who made the arrests to let them go, said Sgt. Brett Palmer. “I was told ‘no,’ I was not authorized to arrest,” Palmer said Friday.

On Thursday, Arpaio launched a three-day “crime suppression operation” aimed at suppressing crime and illegal immigration, concentrating on Chandler and Queen Creek and surrounding areas. The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office has about 60 deputies and 140 posse members involved in the operation and Pinal County has about 10 deputies helping out.

Arpaio said Saturday afternoon at the press conference that within a 16-hour crime suppression sweep beginning Friday, deputies had made 72 arrests, including the arrests of 25 illegal immigrants. He said 15 of those arrests were made on state charges. On Thursday, deputies made 36 arrests, eight of them illegal immigrants on state charges.

Deputies came across the three illegal immigrants who were released Thursday during traffic stops.

Palmer said he pulled over a car that was illegally displaying a license plate about 8 p.m. near Ray Road and Arizona Avenue. One of the three passengers in the car spoke only Spanish and had only a Mexican ID card, two legal criteria for questioning someone about their immigration status, Palmer said Friday. The passenger admitted to being here illegally, Palmer said.

The other two illegal immigrants were stopped at Interstate 10 and Warner Road between 9 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. for an unsafe lane change.

Palmer said the deputy who made the stop was able to determine they were illegal immigrants.

An ICE agent told the deputy he couldn’t make the arrest, Palmer said.

Details about Friday’s operations were not immediately available Saturday.  

Over the past few years, ICE would have deported the illegal immigrants, Arpaio said Friday.

Arpaio said he believes Washington accelerated the new directives for political reasons.

On Saturday, Arpaio said ICE officials informed his deputies on Friday that they would have to release 10 illegal immigrants who did not have any other criminal charges against them. However, 15 other illegal immigrants were transported by deputies after they were found to have state charges against them.

Homeland Security spokesman Chandler said Friday that ICE would evaluate the immigration arrests made during the sweep, but ICE would “only concur with those arrests if they further the agency’s priority to identify and remove criminals and other aliens who pose a risk to public safety.”

In issuing the new 287(g) policies July 10, Homeland Security said it was concerned that local police were using minor infractions to get illegal immigrants deported.

To combat that, Homeland Security will require agencies to “pursue all criminal charges that originally caused the offender to be taken into custody.”