Of course, Sheriff Joe was there, too, hogging the mic as much as he could. Later, when I asked him to explain his quote in a GQ profile that all Mexican migrants are "dirty," he told me he was referring to garbage in the desert.
But the magazine quote had nothing to do with environmentalism. In the article, Arpaio repeated the canard that illegal aliens bring disease with them, saying, "They're all dirty." That's not a mere dis of litterbugs, Joe.
Stephen Lemons
Guadalupe activist William Robles with his drum.
Courtesy of William Robles
MCSO Deputy Loren Gaytan being videotaped while harassing Robles on the street.
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Cheering Joe and the rest were members of the extremist nativist group United for a Sovereign America, an organization that has accepted Ku Klux Klan members and neo-Nazis into their ranks and meet-ups. U.S.A. founder Rusty Childress stood by, along with his perennial sidekick and Snuffy Smith impersonator Buffalo Rick Galeener. (It was Galeener who pleaded guilty in 2008 to urinating in public in front of a Latina and her child near the Macehualli Day Labor Center).
There also was Minuteman Chris Simcox, a dark-horse candidate for the GOP U.S. Senate nomination against Senator John McCain. The ex-kindergarten teacher and pseudo-tough guy has raised $20,000 — to McCain's $919,000 — according to the latest campaign filings.
State Senator John Huppenthal — known for recently beating the rap on charges of tearing a campaign sign out of an old lady's hands — was one of the last people to speak. He mostly puckered up to Pearce. I was about to suggest the pair go steady when Huppenthal threw out an odd statistic: "Less than 10 percent of our population has murdered over 50 percent of our police officers."
He later clarified that the 10 percent he was speaking about were illegal residents of Arizona. He told me he did not mean the stat to refer to cop killings nationwide.
First, Arizona's undocumented make up nowhere near 10 percent of the population. Arizona's total population is 6.5 million. According to recent conservative estimates published in the Arizona Republic, the state's illegal immigrant population is down about a third, to 350,000. That's about 5 percent of the total population. I knew the stat was bogus from jump and told Huppenthal so.
The legislator from Chandler couldn't remember where he'd gotten the statistic and suggested it might have been from Arizona Department of Public Safety. So I spoke to DPS Lieutenant Steve Harris, who said the agency doesn't track whether cop-killers are undocumented.
A representative for the federal government's Uniform Crime Reporting Program, which keeps stats on crime for the FBI, told me the same thing about its tracking.
When I got back to Huppenthal with this info, he told me that his office had found the statistic through its own research but said he couldn't locate the file on the subject.
Um, okay.
Thing is, I think Huppenthal knows better. At the Capitol, he made the following statement concerning illegal immigration:
"I'm a Statue of Liberty kind of guy. I came to this issue a little reluctantly."
Huppenthal was referring to the famous inscription at the base of Lady Liberty, the Emma Lazarus poem The New Colossus. You know, the one that reads, in part, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free."
His statement betrayed a glimmer of a conscience, despite the smear of the Mexican immigrant community that dropped from his lips. One day, many of those who've slandered immigrants will eat their words.
