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Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s boys in beige raided a Valley business this morning in search of illegal immigrants using fake IDs in order to work — again. The result: a whopping four arrests.
About 9:30 a.m., sheriff’s deputies “swarmed” the Allied Tube Company near 27th Avenue and Thomas Road in search of “false documentations for working status” after receiving a tip over a year ago that the company had illegal immigrants working there.
Two of the four arrests were made at the business, two were made at the homes of the alleged undocumented workers, and two more are being sought by authorities, the sheriff’s office says.
The busts come a day after a federal judge ruled that Arpaio violated the constitutional rights of two men he arrested during a similar raid in 2009. In that case, the two “illegals” turned out to be U.S. citizens who hadn’t broken any laws.
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Read about that little mishap here.
It should also be noted that America’s self-proclaimed “toughest sheriff” stole “misspent” nearly $100 million in taxpayer money over the past eight years on funding for raids similar to this one.
Maricopa County officials started reviewing the sheriff’s spending habits about six months ago when budget officials and members of the Board of Supervisors — with whom Arpaio doesn’t exactly have the rosiest relationship — suspected him of using money designated to fund detention facilities to pay for pet projects, such as rounding up illegal immigrants working at places like the Burlington Coat Factory and Pei Wei restaurants, or tailing county supervisors and judges as part of his public-corruption stings.
But hey, what’s $100 million, right?
