Arpaio to launch immigration and crime sweep

[Angelhair]

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio says he will launch his latest crime and immigration sweep on Thursday.

The sheriff's office wouldn't specify which areas of the county that includes Phoenix and its sprawling suburbs deputies will patrol during the sweep.

But Arpaio says he will focus on high-crime areas and target immigrant smugglers and the drop houses where they hide their customers. Since early 2008, Arpaio has conducted 14 crime and immigration sweeps.

Critics say Arpaio's deputies have racially profiled Hispanics during the sweeps.

The sheriff says people pulled over in the patrols were approached because deputies had probable cause to believe they had committed crimes.

Arpaio to launch immigration and crime sweep

 

[waltky]

Sheriff Joe Arpaio using aircraft in latest drug crime sweep...

Joe Arpaio using aircraft in latest crime sweep
Mar. 29, 2011 - "Operation Desert Sky," targets drug-smuggling corridors in southwest desert

With 30 aircraft patrolling at least 30 days, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office most recent crime suppression sweep is poised to become one of the largest in Arizona's history. Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Tuesday announced the launch of "Operation Desert Sky," targeting drug-smuggling desert corridors in the southwest and southeast parts of the county. Unlike previous crime sweeps, Operation Desert Sky will use 30 fixed wing aircraft to spot smugglers from the air.

Airborne "spotters" will report any unusual or suspicious activity to deputies on the ground, according to Arpaio. Operation Desert Sky will also enlist the services of drug sniffing dogs, armed posse members, human-smuggling and drug-enforcement units and SWAT teams equipped with M-16s. The operation comes as a response to 207 recent arrests of illegal immigrants and the seizure of nearly 36,000 pounds of marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamines in the past year.

"I don't go along with the theory that the border is more secure than ever before," Arpaio said, adding that human- and drug-trafficking statistics from last year contradict a number of reports quoting federal officials who say that crime along the border has dropped. "I'm not going to blame the federal government because they are never going to secure the border. I blame the politicians that say we must secure the border first," Arpaio said. Drug enforcement in Arizona's interior, he argued, should be an example for border security.

Read more: Joe Arpaio using aircraft in latest crime sweep

See also:

AP Analysis: U.S. Still Lacks Border Strategy
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 Washington (AP) - The federal government hasn't come up with a comprehensive strategy to secure the U.S.-Mexico border, even as an all-out war between Mexico and its violent drug gangs has claimed 35,000 lives and pushed hundreds of thousands of immigrants into the United States.

The U.S. government has spent nearly $4 billion on various approaches, including a $2.4 billion border fence effort, two deployments of National Guard troops to temporarily bolster the Border Patrol, and a now-defunct $1 billion "virtual fence" that covered 53 miles of the 2,100-mile U.S.-Mexico border until the Obama administration scrapped it earlier this year. "In spite of an effort to do more, there does not appear to be a plan in place that actually accomplishes the objectives of a secure border," Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said earlier this month in a speech to the U.S.- Mexico Congressional Border Issues Conference.

The physical fence saw drugs catapulted over it, tunneled under it and even driven over with homemade ramps. "Show me a 10-foot fence, I'll show you an 11-foot ladder" became common wisdom along the border. And the Homeland Security Department now faces lawsuits from landowners who found their property in a no-man's land on the other side of the fence, inaccessible to the rest of the United States. The U.S. also tried the SBInet virtual fence plan, abandoned earlier this year after a billion-dollar expenditure. Now there's a new plan to install cameras, radar and other gadgets. But that gear won't be in place border-wide until at least 2021 and maybe not until 2026, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says these efforts are working, and she points to a 36 percent drop in apprehensions at the border and the addition of thousands of newly hired Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection agents. Those successes, she tells Congress, need to be built upon. "In March 2009, the Obama administration launched the Southwest Border Initiative to bring focus and intensity to Southwest border security, coupled with a reinvigorated, smart and effective approach to enforcing immigration laws in the interior of our country," Napolitano said in written testimony submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month. "We are now two years into this strategy and, based on our own indicators of progress as well as previous benchmarks by Congress, it is clear that this approach is working."

But that initiative focused almost entirely on adding people and financial resources to the border, an effort that experts say is incomplete without a wider strategy that focuses on hard information about what and who is getting across the border daily, statistics the administration has been unable to collect. Most of the planning at the moment is focused on the Arizona-Mexico border, the busiest section of the border in terms of smuggling drugs and people. For that, Homeland Security has crafted a plan to replace the virtual fence, at a cost of another $775 million and five years. Yet an overall strategy from the Pacific to Gulf coasts is lacking, critics say.

MORE

 

[LostAmerican]

Sheriff Joe Arpaio using aircraft in latest drug crime sweep...

Joe Arpaio using aircraft in latest crime sweep
Mar. 29, 2011 - "Operation Desert Sky," targets drug-smuggling corridors in southwest desert

With 30 aircraft patrolling at least 30 days, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office most recent crime suppression sweep is poised to become one of the largest in Arizona's history. Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Tuesday announced the launch of "Operation Desert Sky," targeting drug-smuggling desert corridors in the southwest and southeast parts of the county. Unlike previous crime sweeps, Operation Desert Sky will use 30 fixed wing aircraft to spot smugglers from the air.

Airborne "spotters" will report any unusual or suspicious activity to deputies on the ground, according to Arpaio. Operation Desert Sky will also enlist the services of drug sniffing dogs, armed posse members, human-smuggling and drug-enforcement units and SWAT teams equipped with M-16s. The operation comes as a response to 207 recent arrests of illegal immigrants and the seizure of nearly 36,000 pounds of marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamines in the past year.

"I don't go along with the theory that the border is more secure than ever before," Arpaio said, adding that human- and drug-trafficking statistics from last year contradict a number of reports quoting federal officials who say that crime along the border has dropped. "I'm not going to blame the federal government because they are never going to secure the border. I blame the politicians that say we must secure the border first," Arpaio said. Drug enforcement in Arizona's interior, he argued, should be an example for border security.

Read more: Joe Arpaio using aircraft in latest crime sweep

See also:

AP Analysis: U.S. Still Lacks Border Strategy
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 Washington (AP) - The federal government hasn't come up with a comprehensive strategy to secure the U.S.-Mexico border, even as an all-out war between Mexico and its violent drug gangs has claimed 35,000 lives and pushed hundreds of thousands of immigrants into the United States.

The U.S. government has spent nearly $4 billion on various approaches, including a $2.4 billion border fence effort, two deployments of National Guard troops to temporarily bolster the Border Patrol, and a now-defunct $1 billion "virtual fence" that covered 53 miles of the 2,100-mile U.S.-Mexico border until the Obama administration scrapped it earlier this year. "In spite of an effort to do more, there does not appear to be a plan in place that actually accomplishes the objectives of a secure border," Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said earlier this month in a speech to the U.S.- Mexico Congressional Border Issues Conference.

The physical fence saw drugs catapulted over it, tunneled under it and even driven over with homemade ramps. "Show me a 10-foot fence, I'll show you an 11-foot ladder" became common wisdom along the border. And the Homeland Security Department now faces lawsuits from landowners who found their property in a no-man's land on the other side of the fence, inaccessible to the rest of the United States. The U.S. also tried the SBInet virtual fence plan, abandoned earlier this year after a billion-dollar expenditure. Now there's a new plan to install cameras, radar and other gadgets. But that gear won't be in place border-wide until at least 2021 and maybe not until 2026, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says these efforts are working, and she points to a 36 percent drop in apprehensions at the border and the addition of thousands of newly hired Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection agents. Those successes, she tells Congress, need to be built upon. "In March 2009, the Obama administration launched the Southwest Border Initiative to bring focus and intensity to Southwest border security, coupled with a reinvigorated, smart and effective approach to enforcing immigration laws in the interior of our country," Napolitano said in written testimony submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month. "We are now two years into this strategy and, based on our own indicators of progress as well as previous benchmarks by Congress, it is clear that this approach is working."

But that initiative focused almost entirely on adding people and financial resources to the border, an effort that experts say is incomplete without a wider strategy that focuses on hard information about what and who is getting across the border daily, statistics the administration has been unable to collect. Most of the planning at the moment is focused on the Arizona-Mexico border, the busiest section of the border in terms of smuggling drugs and people. For that, Homeland Security has crafted a plan to replace the virtual fence, at a cost of another $775 million and five years. Yet an overall strategy from the Pacific to Gulf coasts is lacking, critics say.

MORE

Put American/NATO troops on the Mexican side of the border.

 

[LilOlLady]

"git er done" Sheriff Joe.