Im in an open air prison known as tent city. Its home to more than 1,000 inmates. The section im in right now is mostly Illegal Immigrants. And this place is the brainchild of my guest today the self styled toughest sheriff in america,joe arpaio. He has stoked a National Controversy with his all out campaign against Illegal Immigrants who are coming into the United States from mexico, just 100 miles and more to the south. The question is, is his Campaign Riding roughshod over the Us Constitution . Sheriffjoe arpaio, welcome to hardtalk. Thank you. In the last three years or so, you focused more and more of your time and your resources on the issue of illegal immigration. Why . Well, first of all, you talk about resources. I did had special grants from the state legislature, so that helped out. When people talk about i waste my budget going afterjust illegal aliens, the reason i started focusing on this problem was that two new state laws were passed, that no one talks about. They talk about the present controversial, called a 1070 law, but we had two other laws pass human smuggling and employer sanction. So i decided to enforce those laws that happen to be felonies, most of the laws im talking about. So i started enforcing the human smuggling, arrested over 2,000 people coming into our county, Maricopa County, arizona, and we arrest the smuggler, what they call coyotes, and the Co Conspirators. And when you say Co Conspirators, you regard the people who are being smuggled as Co Conspirators . Exactly. Were the only agency doing that. The county attorney has prosecuted those cases, a 94 conviction rate. Why do you think no other authority regards them as Co Conspirators and you do, and you lock them up . I mean, why do you think the difference is there . Thats a good point. Maybe they dont care about enforcing illegal immigration laws. Maybe the chiefs of police have to report to mayors, or city councils. I dont report to anybody but the 4 Million People who live in this county. Im the elected sheriff. When you talk about other sheriffs, why they dont do it we have 15 sherrifs total in arizona i dont speak for them. I speak for me and thats what we have been doing. And speaking for yourself, try to tell me how your attitude matches up to the words of a state senator russell pearce, who has been in the forefront of the political effort to take on the Illegal Immigrants. He said not so long ago, he said it is time to circle the wagons against Illegal Immigrants who are responsible for a crime wave in our state and are stealing ourjobs. Do you bring the same mindset . Well, russell is a formal Law Enforcement officer in fact, he was my chief deputy for a year when i first took office, so he has a lot of experience in Law Enforcement. And now hes a state senator, politician. But hes been behind many of these laws. Thats right. Relating to illegal immigration. And they have been upheld by other courts. But leaving aside the legality, and we will get to law 1070 in a minute, butjust in terms of the mindset, do you see Illegal Immigrants as responsible for a crime wave and for stealing jobs . Well, you know, first of all, it doesnt matter, its a violation of the law. Im an equal opportunity law enforcing guy i lock everybody up, whether it is hookers or deadbeats or animal cruelty, murders, you name it. This happens to be another law that im enforcing. So if its. But you have to prioritise. Any lawman has to prioritise because youve only got limited resources. And i just wonder why youve chosen to prioritise the immigration issue when looking at the statistics, and im quoting here from the independent immigration policy institute, they say, im quoting them, crime rates are falling in arizona and Research Shows that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than the native born. I believe the crime rates im not trying to take credit, nobody gives me credit anyway but the crime has gone down in this county, just about the time i started enforcing the illegal immigration laws, including crime suppression operations. Where we go into certain areas and maybe arrest what, like, im trying to think of the figures, lets say the average of 100 people ina15 hourcrime. These are your sweeps, where you go into, lets be honest about it, you go into latino communities. Ive gone into white neighbourhoods, all different types. I know you have but by and large, according to lots of local people ive spoken to, you go into hispanic and latino neighbourhoods, you sweep through, you pick up people, sometimes on very trivial misdemeanours, and then you check out their immigration status. Well, thats not true we have hit some areas that happen to be hispanic but theres a high crime rate there, so we go into areas where theres a high crime rate, notjust into neighbourhoods we dont go on street corners arresting people because they look like they are from another country. We dont do that. We arrest all types of violators of the law in our crime suppression, from dope peddlers to warrants. I can go on and on. Well get back to that because it does get to the heart of the debate right now about the law 1070 here in arizona, but before we do, a fundamental point is not the case that immigration law, defining it and implementing it and keeping americas borders safe, is a federal government responsibility, not that of the state or of local lawmen such as yourself . Well, you know, i was a federal official. For almost 28 years, i was the regional director of mexico, south america, texas, arizona for the us drug enforcement. I know where the Mexican Border is, i know where the problems are in mexico and other countries. Sure, but its not your responsibility as sheriff of Maricopa County. It is my responsibility. We have state laws that i am enforcing. Ijust mentioned the two laws that we are enforcing. We do have Inherent Authority to enforce federal laws. We do enforce the bank robberies, as fbi, guns, atf, i can go on and on. So Law Enforcement does enforce federal laws in this country. But as you know much better than me when the federal courts, the District Court looked at the arizona so called sb 1070, the bill which would have brought in new powers for policing and checking immigration status of people, the District Court decided that this was fundamentally a federal issue and that it blocked some of the powers that were designed to go to the police here in arizona. Well, thats just the District Court. Thats going to go to p0. I presume it will go up to the supreme court. There has been other rulings that says that Law Enforcement can enforce the federal immigration laws. So this is one judges opinion. It hasnt affected my operations. Im still doing the same thing ive been doing it for three years. Nothing changes with me. You, of course, as sheriff responsible for the security, the well being of a community. You are a community figure. Does it worry you that so many figures in your own community and thinking about local offices of the National Council on Civil Liberties and la raza, the hispanic legal and human rights movement, they are all absolutely adamant that the way you interpret the law right now and even more so the new law 1070 are a fundamental violation of rights and would drive, to quote la raza, a wedge between racial communities. Well, first of all, if you say so many people in the community my polls are usually 80 so youre talking about a small group of people. Your polls recently havent been anywhere near 80 the poll i saw thats most recent, your favourability rate was down to high 30s or low 40s. That was two years ago by a pollster if you read the polls, it was 56 . You are talking about an old poll. Lets talk about current polls that have me at over 80 . So youre going back to garbage that was printed two years ago, some pollster that doesnt like me, but it doesnt matter, i know what my polls are, i know what my support is, i know all the money i have raised for my next election, millions of dollars evidently someone likes what im doing as the sheriff. Sure, but thats a slightly different point from actually considering the law, and ijust, on that issue, its very interesting to me that youve got a picture of you shaking hands with the president , president 0bama, there. And it does seem to me that theres the danger here of you and your supporters, although allies like senator pearce here in arizona, being on a collision course with the president , who has made it quite plain that he does not believe arizona should push ahead with law 1070. Well, you mentioned 0bama and im going to have to respond to that. You see bush underneath. I only met with 0bama as a courtesy to the secret service when the president comes into town, would the sheriff like to meet with the president . Of course you would, because hes your president. Hes still our president. Absolutely. And i would respect the office and maybe we disagree on certain issues but that doesnt matter. Well, you do disagree, dont you, because he also talked about this word a wedge he said that the arizona law would drive a wedge between communities. Well, i dont know about that. Ive had great support with the Hispanic Community. I was their hero at one time when i arrested a the military reservist on a highway for pointing guns at nine people on the street because they looked like they were from mexico. I arrested the military guy. I took a lot of heat on that. So you dont go around pointing guns at people because of what they look like. Now im the enemy. You are now, and ijust want to put this quote to you because it is a very powerful one, i wonder how you react to it. Thomas saenz, who is the president of the Mexican American legal defence fund, he says that the way that you are treating the immigration issue now is very similar, comparable, to what southern sheriffs were doing in the United States in the early 1960s, refusing to bow to federal edicts those, of course, about desegregation. You see any comparison in yourstand . Well, you know, if im so bad, as sheriff, being in office, 17 years, why with the us government, homeland security, train 100 of my deputies and gave them authorities to enforce illegal immigration laws . Why did they do that . 100 deputies have been trained, five weeks of training. Why would they do that if this sheriff is so bad . Another set of figures, just, its interesting to tease out what you make of them. An analysis by a group of civil rights lawyers locally found that 70 of those that were arrested in one of the phased sweeps that you conducted in the area had spanish surnames and they point out that Maricopa County generally has a 31 latino population this was their way of saying whatever the sheriff says, there is racial profiling going on right now in Maricopa County. How do they know how many people we stopped . How do they know how many people we arrested . We didnt take in 70 . Sometimes we do have a crime suppression operation and the criminals, theyre all violating the law, that we arrest happen to be hispanics. Just happen to be . Yeah. We dont racial profile we stop everybody. Everybody. It doesnt matter who they are. But when we stop the person and it happens to be hispanic and also here illegally, were not going to overlook that. Would it worry you if the perception was amongst hispanic people in your community, that it actually wasnt the case . Well, you know, they can i think i have a lot of support from the Hispanic Community. The legal people here not the illegal. Its notjust hispanic groups, human Rights Groups who arent happy, there are even Police Chiefs who i imagine you regard as colleagues of yours, who say that your methods simply are wrong. Im thinking of the chief of police of mesa, george gascon. He says that affecting effective policing needs the cooperation of minority communities and he says we, unlike sheriffjoe, focus on people who are committing predatory crimes. Really . Is he in San Francisco now . Do you know that . Did you check . Well, he was in mesa when he said that. No, iwill tell you no. Thats his philosophy right . Why is he going around locking people, hanging around street corners, around buses, that are poor people . He says he only goes after violent criminals. He says that theres a fundamental issue. You have to establish trust between communities in america. 0h, 0k. And you have failed to do that. Really . I have a lot of trust with the community, big time. I have a i have a hotline. A hotline. 8,000 calls i got in a hotline to report illegal immigration violation. Where do you think all the information comes from . Illegal aliens. Thats how we get our information. Where do you think you get information on dope peddlers . You get it from people involved in Drug Trafficking . The use of drugs . No, i get a lot of information. This is a cop out by Police Chiefs that theyre worried that with the police will be mistrust with the Hispanic Community, it wont give them any information, it takes a lot of resources, yet they can go after hookers and go after task force with no seatbelt and when 53 of the people in myjails booked by all Police Agencies are small crimes, so dont tell me that they only concentrate on big time crimes and violence. The cop out is this they have to report to politicians, they have to report to city councils, city managers, and they dont like to enforce the illegal immigration laws because some people want amnesty in this area in this country. Ithink, if i may, one of the reasons that gascon was not happy with you is that you took one of your well known posses into his neighbourhood. He described it as a deeply dangerous situation. I am the elected sheriff, i can go anywhere i want in this whole county. He was not doing the job on illegal immigration, so i did. And i have the authority as the elected chief Law Enforcement officer to do that. Maybe he should have been doing thejob instead of going out with all these activists, raising money against me. As a highly respected lawman, you have been decorated across the United States. The world. Why are you facing an investigation from the bureau . When you are high profile, you do get people looking into you. Its quite extraordinary in your case, you seem to have upset so many people. A whole host of local of officials accuse you of abusing your power to investigate them. Not just what we talked about, your policing methods with minority groups, but also a systematic abuse of your powers locally. That is not true. We co operate with the grand jury. I have been the First Federal official for 30 years, i know how the government operates. They can have the investigations, i am not concerned about it. Shouldnt you be concerned about it . Shouldnt the people of the city be concerned about it . I will mention again my polls, every day i am in the headlines. It doesnt bother the people, theyve read through all this garbage. It is a question of what the mindset says about your attitude to Law Enforcement. I can see the board which is about the conditions in your tent city, going into the pink underwear that you force your prisoners to wear. Many of them are kept in temperatures higher than 100 fahrenheit. The question is, is it your intent to dehumanise, to humiliate the prisoners you are responsible for . I am an Old Fashioned guy, a senior citizen. When i grew up, when you did something wrong, you took away privileges. We even used the word punishment. Sorry to interrupt, i know it is rude. Many people in your tent city are awaiting trial and have not been convicted. Everyone in that city has been convicted. 0nce once again, you are reading the wrong garbage. They are all convicted. I put those tense up in 1993, korean war tense. Convicted. I put those tense up in 1993, korean wartense. Kents. Kents. 0ur men and women fought for our country in iraq, in afghanistan. They live in tents. Everybody in those tents has been convicted. They are doing their time. These conditions, including the pink underwear, you have been proud to say that you only feed your prisoners two meals a day, you say it costs you more to feed your dogs than it does your prisoners. We have dogs in the jail, yes. I put dogs in the jails, that have been abused. Some of the prisoners under these conditions have yet to be convicted. Everybody in the tents have been convicted. The others have not been. These conditions apply whether they are in the tents or not. I am just asking you whether you think that is acceptable. Of course it is. They get their 2,500 calories. It is just not Pepperoni Pizza or steak, its not where they have television, smoking, coffee. I took all that away, took it away. I was sued when i took away the coffee, but i won that case. So where is the problem . The Hispanic Community is the Fastest Growing in the United States. They are the biggest Minority Community, their numbers are on the rise with a high birth rate, higher than pretty much any other Minority Community in this country. If the Republican Party is to form a coalition in future, they need hispanic and latina votes. Are you helping the party reach out to that community . I have no idea. Ijust lock them up. I dont care what they are. It has nothing to do with politics. I think the Republican Party would like to be assured we lock up anybody, italian, whatever. It doesnt bother me if anybody says i am locking up hispanics, i am locking everybody up. You are very proud of your roots, your family is italian. They were immigrants themselves to the United States. I know you will tell me they were legal immigrants, its a fair point. In the end, your history is part of the rich american immigrant experience. On a personal level, does it strike you as strange that you have pitched up a job where so much of what you do seems to be a about stopping immigrants making a life in america . No, this had been going on for three years when the laws were passed. Before thisjob, i had other priorities. It is myjob to enforce the laws. Ideal with the president and attorney general. I got along very well working with the mexican government. You would not get along with the current mexican president. He has accused arizona and by extension you. I disagree with him. Stick his nose out of our business. I know the secrets of mexico, i lived in mexico forfour years. He ought to worry about his own problems, not the United States. Look at his immigration laws, his presence, his corruption. He ought to be looking at himself, not the United States. Coming back to something we discussed earlier, if there has to be a collusion between the federal government and forces here in arizona who want to pursue a different agenda on immigration policy, are you ready for that . I am ready for anything. You want to wipe the laws off the book . That is ok with me. If the laws are there, i am going to enforce it. If not, i wont. If the feds intervened to tell you you cant do what you have been doing . If that could be proven, and the law says. Justifies what they say, of course i wont do it. I have survived 17 years, i hate the word survived, but i have been getting shots for 17 years. People wonder why you do it, you dont get much money, you dont want to be the governor. When i leave, youll forget my name. Why do i do this . What objective . Because im getting a little publicity . I dont need that. What is my reason . I ask myself that. Youre not going to ask me. I was waiting for you to tell me when i go on the streets and everybody comes up to me, almost everybody, and they say, thank you, sheriff, thank you for what youre doing, that motivation, as long as they keep saying thank you, thank you, ill keep going. Time for me to say thank you. Thank you for being on hardtalk, sheriffjoe arpaio. Hello again. Today marks the first day of the meteorological autumn, so i thought we would start with a summary of summer. A decent start. Temperatures soared up to 35 celsius back in june, but since then it has been rather disappointing. A cool second half, especially in august. The first few weeks terrible and quite wet at times too. This morning we get off to a chilly start of the day. Out in the countryside, temperatures down to about 3 4 degrees in the coldest spots first thing, so a chill in the air. Apart from that there will be plenty of morning sunshine. Most areas having a dry morning as well. But into the early afternoon the cloud will bubble up, especially in eastern parts of the uk. A scattering of showers begins to develop. A largely dry picture in scotland. A few showers towards the borders and certainly into eastern counties of england. Those showers get going. Some of them will be heavy. Thunder mixed in, but pretty well scattered. In the sunshine, wherever you are during the day on friday, there will be pleasant sunshine and it should feel reasonable, with temperatures generally into the high teens to the low 20s and a lightish north westerly breeze in parts of the country. During the evening, those showers begin to fade away slowly. The second half of the night should become dry, and with clearing skies it will be another chilly night. So to start off the weekend again temperatures down to about 11 12 degrees. Colder than that in the countryside. About 3 4 in the coldest spots. What about the weekend weather prospects . Definitely a weekend of two halves. Saturday with the best of it. Sunny spells for the most part. But on sunday, after a bright start, particularly in the east, we start to see a band of rain moving across the uk. Here is the pressure chart for the weekend. High pressure initially. Theres this zone of wet weather moving into the second half of the weekend, with strengthening winds. In more detail, saturday is a decent day, with sunshine. Dry for the vast majority. Temperatures doing pretty well. High teens to low 20s, with light winds. It will feel pleasant in that september sunshine. Most temperatures towards south east england. We will see this rain encroach overnight into northern ireland. After a bright start to the day across eastern scotland, much of england will see cloud thicken up. Outbreaks of rain moving in and it will turn breezy. Temperatures 18 19 degrees typically. Thats your latest weather. This is bbc news. Im samantha simmonds. 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