Immigration Clearinghouse

The incompetence of Sheriff Joe Arpaio was again evident in Maricopa County on Tuesday with the brazen escape of inmate Adrian Gonzalez Cruz, who was serving a life sentence for child rape.

Inmates have escaped Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office custody a handful of times in the past five years, and they were frequently captured within days – if not hours – of their escape.

But the escape of convicted child rapist Adrian Gonzalez Cruz from the Superior Courthouse on Tuesday was unique: He walked out wearing street clothes shortly after 1 p.m. and blended in with the downtown Phoenix lunch crowd.

Surveillance footage released Thursday shows a man believed to be Cruz casually walking to the elevators on the seventh floor and entering the street a minute later.

Cruz, already serving a life sentence for raping a 9-year-old, was on trial for additional charges of kidnapping, sexual assault and sexual contact with a minor.

As soon as deputies realized Cruz was missing from his holding room, they established a perimeter and began combing the area. But by the time they locked down the courthouse and brought in help from other agencies, including Phoenix police K-9 units, to search the area near First Avenue and Jefferson Street, Cruz’s trail was cold.

Sighting reported

Deputies had received a tip that Cruz might have been in the area of a salvage yard at Sixth and Watkins streets, and surveillance footage likely proved the tipster right. But beyond that, the lack of other clues emerging in the past few days has left Bill Knight, the sheriff’s deputy chief of investigations, with one lingering thought: “Best guess? He’s probably in Mexico, but that’s based on nothing more than my own suspicions and my own instincts,” he said.

Cruz came to the United States illegally from Michoacan, Mexico, sometime in the late 1990s, investigators believe.

But even if Cruz fled across the border, that’s not necessarily a roadblock, said Matt Hershey a deputy U.S. marshal in Phoenix. The federal agency frequently assists local police as the two countries communicate frequently about fugitives who move back and forth.

“We do it all the time; we get people out of Mexico, and we get people for Mexico,” Hershey said. “It happens on almost a daily basis here.”

Investigators take the same systematic approach to catching escapees as they do at the outset of a murder investigation, Knight said: Deputies reconstruct the inmate’s life, interests, local contacts and patterns.

In Cruz’s case, deputies first had to confirm the inmate had actually escaped and wasn’t moved to another room, hiding in the court complex or in the custody of some other agency that caught him on the way out the door, Knight said.

That kind of delay isn’t unusual, he said, whether inmates walk off their work-release jobs or slip through a fence around Tent City. It could be hours before deputies discover they’re missing.

“I think most critical would ultimately be, in this one, the guy is obviously on foot. Where is he attempting to go? Does he have local ties or international ties? And where is he going to find the means to get to those destinations?” Knight said.

Investigators dug through Cruz’s prison and jail cells looking for clues; others combed through jail phone records looking for contacts. Deputies set up surveillance outside homes where Cruz had acquaintances.

Letting their guard down

Investigators hope Cruz has slipped into a relative comfort zone. “A lot of times when it first happens, they run real hard, and they don’t have time to settle down,” Hershey said. “Sometimes it’s better if they settle down a little bit and get in a routine of some sort.”

It’ll take the same combination of luck and diligence to capture Cruz, authorities said. They were confident he would ultimately return to serve his life sentence in an Arizona prison.

“We’re going to catch this guy based on somebody grabbing him and bringing him in to be fingerprinted,” Knight said.

More evidence and reason why Sheriff Joe Arpaio needs to be investigated, his 287(g) authorization rescinded and his focus returned to protecting the citizens of Maricopa County from the real crime that threatens the valley Perhaps if Arpaio would devote more manpower to Courthouse security instead of harassing the people of Maricopa County for “being Brown”, this could have been prevented.

That worthless bastard and hero of the rabid right wing loons Joe Arpaio is at it again.

Chaining together prisoners and marching them through the streets of Phoenix.

Dan Weiss relates it at Imagine 2050

Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Phoenix, AZ will chain together hundreds of detained immigrants today and force them to march out of a detention facility and into a “Tent City”.
Arpaio’s Maricopa County office released a media advisory titled, Arpaio Orders Move of Hundreds of Illegal Aliens to Their Own Tent City, that can be described as eerily familiar to the first phase of Nazi Germany’s anti-Semitic propaganda. The statement describes detainees being housed in an outdoor city of tents surrounded by an electric fence, with misbehavior punishable by forced labor on a chain gang.

They will be treated like all other inmates incarcerated here with two exceptions. Arpaio wants them to be instructed in American immigration laws, as a way to help them understand that the violation of these laws has serious consequences not only to them but to society as a whole. And anyone found to violate jail rules, may end up on a chain gang. This chain gang will work to clean the areas of the valley, which have been impacted by human trafficking trade.

The release even quotes Arpaio himself:

“This is a population of criminals more adept perhaps at escape,” the Sheriff says. “But this is a fence they won’t want to scale because they risk receiving quite a shock – literally.”

Wow. One of the more disturbing parts of the statement is the description of when and how the immigrants will be forced to march along with a map and parking instructions for those who wish to witness the event. Parading shackled detainees for public viewing is disgusting.
As a Jewish American it is deeply offensive to see an elected official brazenly flaunt the oppressive treatment of a people whose only crimes were entering the United States without documentation. The dire situation in Arizona is a shameful insult to the democratic freedoms of this country, and should draw cries of outrage from anyone who values the sacrifices our nation has made in the face of oppression.
We’ve seen this pattern in history before. First comes the bigoted propaganda and deprivation of basic human rights, then the intimidation, the detentions, the chains and the forced labor, and sometimes, god forbid, we see the worst. We saw it in Nazi Germany, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the Japanese American Internment Camps, the Trail of Tears…the list goes on.
It’s the same old story. Just with a different tyrant – Joe Arpaio.

_{Dan Weiss is a Chicago Hip Hop artist and the coordinator of the Center for New Community’s Hip Hop Project}

That right boys and girls, while felons run free and terrorize the citizens of Maricopa County, Sheriff Joe is playing the media whore at the expense of hard working men and women whose only “crime” was being “brown” in public.

Same blog different perspective from Rev Rev. David L. Ostendorf, who plainly states:

Stop Arizona. Stop Arpaio. Stop the Circus

At 1:00 p.m. today Joe Arpaio, the infamous sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, will chain up some 200 immigrant prisoners and force march them to his nearby tent city for incarceration. Media are welcome and encouraged to view the march, another sick stunt in the Gestapo Sheriff’s widening repertoire of humiliations. With some 10,000 prisoners currently jailed in the County, the tent city will, the sheriff asserts, serves “as a management tool for potential jail overcrowding.”

After marches, sheriff, what’s next? Box cars?
Frankly, however, the question before us is why this shoddy sheriff is getting away with “law enforcement” run amok. Where are the lawsuits against him? Where are the protests to shut him down? Where are the arrests for civil disobedience? Where are the incensed civic and religious leaders? Where are the civil and human rights advocates? Where is the national immigrant rights movement? Where are the politicians? Where is the federal government? Where?
Ten thousand prisoners in a county jail? A tent city for overflow, with an electrified fence? We’ve seen this horror show before. This is an incarceration empire emerging, generously supported by the people of Arizona. The state government recently gave Arpaio 1.6 million dollars back to fight “illegal immigration,” in spite of his tactics. If immigrant prisoners misbehave, we’re assured, they will be on a chain gang cleaning up the valley. Welcome to the Weimar Republic in the desert.
Today we learn that in 2006 ICE’s National Fugitive Operations Program quietly ignored its mandate requiring 75% of those arrested to be criminals, and began rounding up any undocumented immigrants they could. A Migration Policy Institute report released today indicates that some three-quarters of all the people ICE apprehended over a five year period had no criminal records. $625 million down the drain; 96,000 apprehended. Many of them are now residents of Arpaio’s tent city—“criminals” all.
How ironic that this week marks the beginning of the elephant cruelty trial. Animal rights groups have brought suit to stop alleged mistreatment of elephants by the circus in a showcase trial garnering headlines nationwide. Elephants chained. Elephants marched. Elephants. A real trial.
Much has been said and written of Arpaio. Enough. No more excuses. The responsibility to reign him in is ours. Stop the circus.

To answer the Reverends question, there are 2700 lawsuits pending against Joe Arpaio at the moment. Most, as those filed in the past, will be paid out of the counties coffers since his departments liability policy has a $5 million dollar deductible. It used to be $1 million, but the insurers raised the bar after paying hundreds of other lawsuits the Sheriff lost.

The rest of your questions Reverend? Well, Sheriff Joe basically says “Fuck You!” to all who oppose or question his motives.

The only ones who can rein in this ass klown is the voters of Maricopa County or DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano who could cut off his 287(g) funds. And if ever there was reason to do so, this is it.

We can’t count on the voters in a State where a Border Patrol agent murders an illegal immigrant in cold blood. The evidence corroborates the prosecutions case and in the end, two mistrials let the cowardly bastard walk free.

Or a state where a rancher is called a “hero” for violating the civil rights, including kicking a woman who is on the ground, of more than 12,000 illegals he has alleged to have rounded up on his ranch in the past years.

American society has gone to the dogs when people like Arpaio, Barrett, Corbett, Ramos and Compean are considered heroes, and an underclass is treated less than human.