Joe Arpaio Arrests Six Year Old Girl
No worries, citizens of Maricopa County, Arizona, your crime problems have been dealt with:
Maricopa County Sheriff Office deputies arrested a 6-year-old suspected illegal immigrant Friday, the day President Barack Obama softened the country’s deportation policy toward young illegal immigrants.
The girl was with 15 other people believed to be in the country illegally who were traveling to the Midwest and northeast United States, said Chris Hegstrom, spokesman for the Sheriff’s Office.
“She’s been turned over to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to try to determine where she’s from. She told us she’s from El Salvador. That’s what she told us,” he said.
The arrest took place Friday night at an undisclosed location in northern Maricopa County.
“It was part of a human-smuggling investigation that we’ve been investigating throughout the Valley,” Hegstrom said.
The whereabouts of the girl’s parents or other caretakers is unknown. All of the people traveling with her claimed to know nothing about the girl.
“Where was she going? What are they going to do with her? We’re trying to get to the bottom of this right now,” Sheriff Joe Arpaio said.
All of the other suspected illegal immigrants, who claimed to be from Mexico, were booked into jail.
“We enforce the human-smuggling laws here,” Arpaio said. “Every chance I can get to take action on my own without turning them over to ICE, I do. Especially with the new policy the president has.”
In most of the jurisdictions I’ve had experience with, when a child is picked up by police and the parents can’t be located they get turned over to the relevant child welfare agency. In Joe Arpaio’s Arizona, they apparently get handcuffs slapped on their wrists.
Arpaio is just the kind of thug the right wing loves.
But you know who loves him even more right now? The Obama administration. Good work, Sheriff. Great timing.
@michael reynolds:
I’d like to check Arpaio’s bank account just now, to see if he’s recently received a cheque from Obama … could such perfect timing be coincidental?
Why is this idiot putting handcuffs on the VICTIM of a crime? Welcome to tea party America.
He may have to call his crack investigative team back from Hawaii to solve this one!
@ Doug: “In most of the jurisdictions I’ve had experience with, when a child is picked up by police and the parents can’t be located they get turned over to the relevant child welfare agency.”
Yes, but in most (all?) of the jurisdictions you’ve had experience with, the child in question probably hasn’t been some wetback/islamofascist/narcoterrorist/illegal-alien-trying-to steal-the-job-of -some-hardworking-legal-citizen who probably came here to work as a child prostitute. Surely, even you can see that this situation is completely different from what you’ve experienced in the past.
Plus, the sheriff got to take a swipe at how Obama is soft on immigration enforcement, and you must know how important red meat is to the diet.
Honestly, Arpaio would be much happier in North Korea – no diversity, no illegal immgration, a complete law and order state. So why doesn’t he leave?
His suspicions were first aroused by her insistence on using a teleprompter during her questionning. It was clear that she was the ring-leader of the entire group, and probably originally from Kenya.
The headline and the last graf of this blog post are funny in sort of a tragicomedy sense.
Obviously Arpaio didn’t personally affect the arrest. Obviously a person can be arrested without being cuffed, especially a young child. Obviously in connection with an illegal immigrant sting when children are involved they’re first passed along to ICE and not to a local CPS office. You know, because iCE handles illegal immigrants. After which custody issues are determined. Of course on the Internet none of that really is obvious. Hell, this sort of blog entry only can exist on the Internet. It couldn’t be written anywhere else.
In any event, Arpaio will continue managing illegal immigrant stings until either a final court order tells him not to, or until the Arizona AG orders him not to, or until voters in Maricopa County eject him from office. I fail to see the need for high dudgeon mode.
Surely, everyone can see the tragedy that’s been brought to this little girl by the adults in charge of her care who forced her to engage in this illegal act. Why aren’t you condemning her parents or guardians for putting her in this position? Why aren’t you condemning the (presumed) human smugglers who intended to profit from the exploitation of the illegal immigrants, including the little six year old girl? Instead you condemn a duly elected sheriff for enforcing the laws – for doing his job – by arresting a large group of immigrants who crossed the border illegally. Surely, all of the adults in the group knew they were breaking the law and knew that a possible consequences of that if they were apprehended.
And do you really, honestly believe a six year old girl is hauled off to prison in handcuffs – implying she’s being locked up with common criminals? Really?
Now, I’m not naive. I understand the entire point of the post is to pile on Arpaio and portray him as a heartless bigot who hates brown skinned people. I get that. It’s what leftists do.
But to get to your moral high ground, you completely ignore the illegal acts of the human smugglers and all of the adults who put the little girl in the precarious position she now finds herself. All of the adults charged with her supervision failed her by choosing to break the law, while Arpaio did his job by enforcing the law. But he’s the scapegoat.
It’s a bizarre box you’ve put yourself in.
You know Doug,
I don’t agree with anything that Arpaio is doing and will go so far as to say I support full amnesty for immigrants residing in the US.
However, what do you think human smugglers were doing with a 6 year old girl without any parents or guardian present?
Do you need that spelled out for you?
Sometimes bad people luck into achieving positive outcomes.
The girl has been turned over to federal authorities and and any federal agent worth his/her salt would have to be asking: who paid you to deliver this girl? and who was accepting delivery?
Perhaps I am wrong, but evil Arpaio might have saved this girl from a short life of misery and pain.
@Tsar Nicholas: Agreed. The idiocy of tribalistic politics on full display here in this blog post.
@cfpete: We need boarders.. and actual backbones to watch them. Seems anybody can wake in and smuggle drugs, people and weapons as they want. Wake up Washington ! We need more Arpaios and less bureaucraty.
@Andre Comeau:
I don’t understand what paid lodgers and eyes in your spine have to do with dragging all sort of debris in one’s wake. However, it does sound like the premise of a fairly interesting Del Toro movie.
@anjin-san: Do we know that really happened? THey said arrested, but I would think that even a scumbag like Arpaio would know better than that.
@Tsar Nicholas: Then frikkin’ read the post again.
@cfpete: “However, what do you think human smugglers were doing with a 6 year old girl without any parents or guardian present?”
The most likely is that her parents had put together enough money to pay for her to be brought into the country.
@Christopher Bowen: “THey said arrested, but I would think that even a scumbag like Arpaio would know better than that. ”
I wouldn’t.
@michael reynolds: Seconding this.
@ Barry. Yes, her parents paying to have her transported is entirely possible. And just as likely is the possibility that even if those parents DID do just that, human trafficking involving children have been known to have incredibly horrible results, everything from slavery to molestation to MURDER!
You don’t like the sheriff because he’s hardnosed, puts his prisoners in pink outfits, and doesn’t coddle them? I suggest you look up the definition of PENAL code. Hint, got nothing to do with penis.
But, lemme get this straight, just to be sure. In your mind, it’s perfectly okay for someone to leave their unprotected six year old daughter, knowing the state of this world, in the hands of people that abandon truckloads of passengers in the desert in 120 degree heat to die, that sell children into slavery and prostituion, or worse. That have no guarantee that even if those Coyote’s are “honorable”, their child will not be “lost” on the way?
Is that really what you are saying?