By: Geoffrey Yonil

One of the most well known sheriffs in the country, Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County in Arizona, is being accused of being a racist by the Justice Department. It doesn’t come as much of a surprise when considering the largesse of complaints compiled over the years since he began his sheriffdom in 1992.

Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney of the civil rights division of the Justice Department, claimed that after conducting a two-year long investigation, authorities have found an exorbitant amount of evidence that Arpaio and his deputies have been prejudiced against Latinos, which is being called “unconstitutional policing” in the arrests and detentions of Maricopa County’s Latino population.

While the investigation included over 400 interviews with staff, inmates, and citizens might seem insufficient evidence to some, then the massive amounts of racially-charged letters and e-mails Arpaio sent to his deputies on a regular basis should be. Overall, authorities state that Arpaio has fostered an environment of racial discrimination reminiscent of ante-Civil-Rights-Movement.

Arpaio has spent his past nigh twenty years, along with reshaping and revitalizing Maricopa’s correctional facilities, amounting thousands of complaints not only within his prison populations for unconstitutional and unethical treatments but also among the citizenry of Maricopa County. It’s amazing that this man still has a job in law enforcement, actually. And while he’s mostly known for his somewhat wacky ideas about prisoners wearing pink underwear and creating a volunteer chain gang policy, he has also propagated a campaign against the Latino community that would make Strom Thurmond proud. The Tent City jails, i.e. an outdoor jail in 100+ weather, has warranted him both criticism and praise. Though whatever praise he may have received for the idea went quickly when Arpaio himself stated the Tent City was supposed to be like a concentration camp, a horrible analogy that I still don’t believe he understands why people responded so negatively.

Some have claimed that he’s put punishment back in correctional facility; others have claimed that he’s like the bad guy in every Orwell and/or Dickens book and a horrible example of the penal system. But whether you like or dislike his methods, it’s indisputable that there is amassing evidence that Arpaio has implemented unethical techniques and biases within his department which has led to the second-class status of many Latino citizens.

But Arpaio, it should be noted, is only a symptom of the system at work. With the recent controversial HB 2162 law in Arizona, the state, along with other states that followed Arizona’s example, have been criticized for drastically reducing the civil liberties of Latino citizens. There is little dispute that HB 2162 is a piece of racially charged legislation since it specifically targets a minority of illegal immigrants and purely based on racial profiling. While Arpaio had been conducting his sheriff department long before the bill based, a reason as to why he has been able to skate by these past 19 years in his elected office as sheriff could reasonably be because he represented a majority of not only Maricopa County but the entirety of Arizona’s opinions about Latinos: negative stereotypes based on unfounded information to promote a homogenous, unmixed and racist community.

Arpaio and Arizona’s increasing hostilities towards their Latino population represent an un-tethering of the American Dream to provide an equal environment for all who wished it to come here. “Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” chiseled into the Statue of Liberty has become more and more faint and undeserving in the millennium of anti-foreigner propaganda and policing. And it’s won’t be a surprise what will happen if we continue to condone government officials to promote such bigotry when looking at the past, like, for example, Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian immigrants who in 1920 were wrongly convicted of a murder they did not commit and in 1927 they were murdered by the state. The only reason why Sacco and Vanzetti, along with countless others, were wrongly accused, convicted, and imprisoned was because of racial biases within our judicial and correctional system, which, much like Sheriff Arpaio, act as a cancer to our society of liberty and equality, eroding the very foundations of our country.

While America likes to believe that its biggest threats are external, manifesting complaints about the Middle East, Latino immigrants, and Chinese “overlords” (which does sounds pretty racist when you think about it), among many others, our greatest threat is ourselves and the backward policies will continually allow to be passed. It is when we forget that we were a nation that began on the principles of freedom for all and expanded the definition of who “all” referred to, then we will begin to see our country implode.

With these new charges being levied against Sheriff Arpaio, while symbolic at best, will hopefully enlighten the voting public of Maricopa County and elsewhere in the States to begin rethinking who they elect into their public office as his term ends next year.