The Arizona Sheriff Behind Trump’s Extreme Immigration Plan
Ex-Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose name is shorthand for anti-immigrant animus, dragged what is left of his 92-year-old corporal form to the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee where he was feted like a war hero despite not being on the list of official speakers. Instead, he roved the convention, took a photo with Newt Gingrich (whose lectures he used to pipe throughout the jail), and called former President Donald Trump “the only hero I’ve ever had in my life.”
Just a month earlier, at a Turning Point PAC town hall in Phoenix, Trump summoned Arpaio to the stage and awkwardly embraced him, planting an odd kiss somewhere around the ex-lawman’s cheek. “I used to love that guy!” Trump exclaimed enthusiastically. “I don’t kiss men, but I kiss him!”
Some expert commentators have been skeptical about the feasibility of Trump’s plan for “mass deportation,” which, depending on what version you read, also includes challenging “birthright citizenship,” which is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. There are somewhere around 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, and such an operation would require substantial resources, over $210 billion or more than the budget of the U.S. Army, according to journalist Radley Balko. “Unprecedented,” the Washington Post described the plan. “An extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration,” the New York Times explained.
From my point of view, however, such an inhumane and dubiously legal operation is not nearly as inconceivable as it sounds. We have been here before.
Arpaio was allowed to run amuck for over 20 years and deported tens of thousands of people thanks to state and federal laws that enabled his reign of terror. He staged flashy deportation raids that he called “saturation patrols” or “crime suppression operations” and invited the media so that they could record the spectacle. He asked reporters, ““Want to see the tent where all the Mexicans are?” The most frightening part? People watched and, for a long time, did nothing.
Former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano (D), who told the New York Times she thought Trump’s mass deportation plan was impossible, should know better. She was there, and her infamous friendship with Arpaio contributed to the state and federal governments’ slow-moving response to what were obvious, well-documented abuses. It was not until Latino activists, who were determined not to see their communities and families destroyed, collected abundant evidence such that no one could ignore the ways in which Arpaio violated the law. Even still, Arpaio never faced punishment for his crimes because Trump pardoned him. The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office is still discriminating against Latinos. Why shouldn’t Trump and his cronies feel emboldened?
The right-wing, Heritage Foundation-backed Project 2025 has laid out a blueprint that describes the reign of terror and mass arrests Trump is prepared to make.
Trump’s plans to deport millions of people is plainly inspired by right-wing fears of voter fraud, a version of the “Great Replacement Theory,” which places nonwhite immigrants at the center of a grand (and totally false) plot. Project 2025 — the nearly-1,000-page manifesto purporting to be a “blueprint” for another Trump administration — is “engineered to dismantle the foundations of the immigration system,” according to the Niskanen Center, a nonpartisan think tank.
Trump’s former senior advisor Stephen Miller — who also runs a legal group challenging election procedures in multiple states — has also acknowledged his debt to the “toughest sheriff.” A few months ago, Miller told conservative political activist Charlie Kirk that the Trump 2025 deportation plan included bringing in local and state law enforcement, as well as federal agencies like the Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the National Guard, in addition to housing potential deportees in tent camps along the U.S.-Mexico border. “Go out, make arrests. No one’s going to tell you not to put cuffs on somebody and send them home,” Miller said, explaining how he would embolden local law enforcement, including county sheriffs.
In addition to immigration measures like expedited removal at the U.S.-Mexico border, sheriffs across the country are already activated and ready to arrest, detain and deport. We already know because they met with Trump regularly. In 2017, Trump met with sheriffs as part of a roundtable related to border security, at which he praised sheriffs as willing to stand as a bulwark to prevent the dreaded “invasion” from the South. In 2018, Trump held a meeting with law enforcement in which a sheriff asked Trump to “indemnify sheriffs” when they make immigration arrests.
The right-wing, Heritage Foundation-backed Project 2025 has laid out a blueprint that describes the reign of terror and mass arrests Trump is prepared to make. Plus, Thomas Homan, Trump’s previous acting director of ICE who helped write Project 2025, has declared he is prepared to help Trump implement his plan.
“I have a message for the millions of illegal aliens who Joe Biden allowed to enter the country in violation of federal law,” Homan said at the RNC this month. “Start packing, because you’re going home!”
During his administrative tenure, Homan rejected the long-standing policy to focus on deporting individuals accused of serious crimes. He also threatened to prosecute so-called “sanctuary cities” and sheriffs who resisted cooperating with ICE. (Previously as a rising star in the deportation bureaucracy, he received a commendation from then-President Barack Obama.)
During the RNC, the anti-immigration rhetoric recalled Hitler’s infamous line in Mein Kampf: “All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), who has installed an army at the Texas-Mexico border in addition to spiked buoys and razor wire barriers in the Rio Grande that maim migrants, spoke at the RNC and called migrants, “Rapists, murders, even terrorists.”
Fans waved signs that read “MASS DEPORTATION NOW.”
To be clear — even though it shouldn’t need to be said — immigrants are not only less likely to commit crimes, but they also contribute to the economy more than they take. Even Arpaio — the child of an immigrant — in his heyday admitted that some immigrants were useful. Of course, this false dichotomy between “good” and “bad” immigrants does nothing to deter MAGA from proceeding with their cruel agenda.
Trump has previously said that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the United States. These are ugly words, but why shouldn’t we believe him? We have heard this song before.
Jessica Pishko is an independent journalist and lawyer who focuses on how the criminal justice system and law enforcement intersects with political power. As a contributor to Democracy Docket, Pishko writes about the criminalization of elections and how sheriffs in particular have become a growing threat to democracy.