From Sheriff CLARENCE DUPNIK First of all, the law is totally unnecessary. We already have the authority to stop and detain illegal immigrants and turn them over to the Border Patrol and we do that on a regular daily basis. This law will have no impact whatsoever on illegal immigration. None at all. We already have the authority. We didn’t need it. What the law now does is put us in a position where we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t, because on one hand we get sued by people who think we are illegally profiling and there is a clause in the law which I’ve never heard of in any other law, and I have been the Sheriff here for thirty years, that says any citizen who doesn’t think we are enforcing this law can sue us. That is just outrageous. It’s an anti-law enforcement law in my opinion. Puts us in an impossible situation. It puts us in an impossible situation with the Hispanic community. What they’ve done is driven a wedge between us and the Hispanic community. We depend on our community, Hispanics especially, for information, for cooperation in our crime-fighting efforts. What we really need to stop illegal immigration is more federal assistance on securing that border and we desperately need reform of immigration laws.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Sheriff, what about- you’ve raised, especially, questions about the standard for stopping people, the reasonable suspicion standard. Can you talk about that and your concerns about what that opens the door to?
SHERIFF CLARENCE DUPNIK: You bet. When the law was first passed, which would have been about nine days ago, there was a clause that said 'reasonable suspicion of anybody.' Every Hispanic in this country, especially in Arizona, must have awakened, and I’ve talked to many of them personally, the next day to feel like they’ve been kicked in the teeth, like they’re now second-class citizens, they have a target on their back because when they leave the house they’re going to have to take papers with them and prepare to be stopped and questioned. That, overnight, has made Hispanics second-class citizens.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain what it is you actually are supposed to do if you were to enforce this law? The issue of reasonable suspicion. What do your sheriffs do? What do you do?
SHERIFF CLARENCE DUPNIK: Well, let me tell you what we do now, and I don’t anticipate doing anything differently. I don’t think the new law precludes state and local law enforcement from turning over immigrants, illegal immigrants, to the border patrol. But in the routine course of our duties, when we encounter illegal immigrants, and there are a variety of ways that that happens, especially out in the rural desert areas, once we determine that they are in fact illegal, we call the Border Patrol and turn them over to them. But if we were to enforce this law, what- you know, the people that passed this law are very quick to complain about government overstepping, which is one of their biggest complaints, and the second one is taxation. If we were to start enforcing this law instead of turning them over to the Border Patrol like we do now, we would have to put them the Pima County Jail. We would put the jail into a crisis over night. We would have to overwhelm the rest of the criminal justice system locally here and send the taxpayers a huge bill which is just nonsense, in my opinion. It’s irresponsible of the legislature to do this, and it would be irresponsible of me to do it as well.
JUAN GONZALEZ: but now, your county also includes a significant section of border area right there in southern Arizona. What do you say to those people in Arizona and other parts of the country who say that something has to be done to control the numbers of people who continue to pour into the United Stated over the border from Mexico?
SHERIFF CLARENCE DUPNIK: I would say to them what I just finished saying to you. The federal government needs to do a lot more to stop illegal immigration. One of the things they need to do is illegal reform. I understand that and they understand that as well. This isn’t rocket science. But a few years ago when the Bush administration militarized the border with the National Guardsmen, they put handcuffs on them. They weren’t allowed to do anything related to illegal aliens. They couldn’t even drive a bus that had illegal aliens in it. What we need to do is to put more people on the border to secure it, more technology, and more agents. But we really need reform.
JUAN GONZALEZ: What about the issue that within days the Legislature attempted to amend the bill that had just passed? What were the amendments that they made and did it really have any substantive impact on the original legislation?
SHERIFF CLARENCE DUPNIK: It going to take legal experts with better legal minds than my own to answer that question. But the change that they made a week ago ,Thursday night before they adjourned, was they said you can’t use race, ethnicity, or country of origin solely as a reason for a stop.
AMY GOODMAN: Could you be in legal trouble for not enforcing the law, Sheriff?
SHERIFF CLARENCE DUPNIK: Well, that’s a question that lawyers are going to have to address. But in my opinion is that we are enforcing the law. If we’re arresting illegal aliens and turning them over to the Border Patrol, that seems to be a far better approach from every point of view than what the legislature has done to us.
AMY GOODMAN: Your police chief, the Tucson Police Chief, Roberto Villaseñor, says he’s worried about the impact of the law on investigations with victims and witnesses who might be afraid to come forward. He said he’s opposing the law’s enactment but will work to see that it’s implemented fairly in Tucson. Are you working with Chief Villaseñor?
SHERIFF CLARENCE DUPNIK: All of law enforcement in the state, I think, is working together. There are some of us who are elected officials and are taking political stands. But aside from that, there is a lot of, in my opinion, unanimity as to the problems that this law is causing for law enforcement. It’s an anti-law enforcement law in my opinion.
