Sheriff Joe.

What the situation is:
On February 27, the sheriff and his team arrested a 35 year old man named Javier. He was arrested because he was apart of a human-smuggling ring out of Oaxaca, Mexico.  In the official report, Sheiff Joe makes a statement about the case saying,

“It’s a real tragedy knowing that multiple members of this smuggling operation 
have been deported a number of times each,” said Arpaio. “Martinez, the 
ringleader of this syndicate, had been deported eight times by the U.S 
Government,” Arpaio continued. 

“How can the federal government oversee all the different aspects of millions of 
people on a ‘pathway to citizenship’,” asked Arpaio, “if they can’t manage to track
and deal with people coming and going now? Also how can the US government 
track the 300 illegal immigrants which were released yesterday if they can’t keep 
track of Martinez who has been deported eight different times? I hope they can 
figure that out while they sort out immigration reform.”

In this sweep, the other members recorded included a man who had been deported four times, and another man who had been deported five times. The report also includes that Javier had been in a gun battle in 2010, and has a child in Arizona receiving DES benefits. 


The bigger issue:
While Sheriff Joe is speaking based on his world of immigration, maybe even based on the recency effect, his world is not always the real world. While his complaints about deporting one person eight separate times is valid, he also doesn't see how reform could solve this problem. While Javiers 'gun battle' past could effect his permanent residency status, the people who are trying to come here, that are being smuggled across the border, could benefit from reform so much in that they could come here legally, to everyones pleasure. But, this reform would also cause the Sheriffs Human Smuggling Unit to not continue to receive their 1.6 million in state funds to fight these crimes that no longer exist. It is a sad reality when the priority of existing jobs takes over what should actually be done to reform our broken system.


Also, just for giggles, Sheriff Joe tweeted this on March 1st.