Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office is proud to announce that 11 taco shop employees are off the streets today, thanks to the boys in beige.
This is the 72nd such workplace raid by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office branded as "employer sanctions operations," "criminal employment operations", and now, "operations targeting false identifications used to gain employment."
See also:
-Bill Montgomery's Victims Plead Not Guilty En Masse as Their Children Weep
-Bill Montgomery Is No Immigration Moderate
-Bill Montgomery Fails to Convict an Innocent Man
-Joe Arpaio Says MCSO Doesn't Do "Raids," but Arpaio Touts "Raid" of Supermarket
MCSO hit up two locations of America's Taco Shop, one in Phoenix and one in Tempe.
"[I]ts website says they are the home of the greatest Carne Asada in the Valley," says the press release from the Sheriff's Office.
MCSO says 16 employees were found to have used false identities to get work there, and 11 of those people were arrested.
Of those 11 people arrested, seven were turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, while the other four were booked into the Fourth Avenue Jail on identity theft and forgery, and likely will get special treatment (and not in a good way) from County Attorney Bill Montgomery.
As our colleague Stephen Lemons has been following, the folks scooped up by MCSO in these workplace raids typically face a much more serious charge for faking a Social Security number for work than college kids do for using a false ID. These immigrants are then held without bond, per Arizona's Prop 100, which is supposed to be used for immigrants accused of serious felonies.
In response to the Justice Department's lawsuit against the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office and Arpaio, alleging unconstitutional policing, lawyers for Arpaio admitted "that MCSO has not arrested employers as no employer has been tied into any violations," in these workplace raids, although "employer sanctions" used to be the facade for such raids.