Sheriff Joe discriminating...against the county's own employees

As you may have heard, Sheriff Joe Arpaio is now requiring people to prove their citizenship or legal residency in order to visit our county jails. This is to keep illegal immigrants from visiting their family in jail, as if that is somehow going to reduce illegal immigration. He apparently sees it as another way of catching them. Good luck on that Sheriff. I want to hear the report of who gets caught and deported for visiting a jail. But in the mean time, here is an e-mail I received from a 25 year employee of the court (and U.S. citizen) who was prevented from entering a county jail to do his job because he was not carrying the proper identification. As a former civil rights investigator for the Arizona Attorney General's office, my question is whether the Sheriff is requiring the same documentation (a birth certificate) for those who check "naturalized citizen" on the form, or if they just take your word for it if you look and talk white...I mean right. If the documentation requirement is not the same between natural born and naturalized citizens, the Sheriff could be breaking the law, costing us taxpayers still more money with another lawsuit against our government that could have been prevented. And since I never have received press releases from SJ, and have no desire to, I won't be taking him to court as the West Valley View did to have access to press releases that are public records.

Here is the e-mail I received from a county court employee:

Yesterday, August 15, 2007, I went to the Lower Buckeye Jail with Alicia Dominguez, Public Defender. When we were checking in we were required to fill out a new form. This form has boxes to indicate your citizenship status, one box if you are a U.S. Citizen or National by birth in the United States, another if you are a Naturalized Citizen not born in the United States,” it also asks which court, city and state issued the certificate of Naturalization and requests the number of the Certificate, the date it was issued as well as your passport number and the date of issue. I marked the box for Naturalized Citizen. We turned them in at the window along with our county IDs. After a phone call to her supervisor, the person at the window informed me I had to include all the rest of the information. I said I did not have it with me, and was denied entrance to the facility to do my job.

I have worked for the Courts for over twenty five years; I have been to the jails thousands of times and I had presented my county I.D. There is no governmental requirement to carry the information that was requested. There is no requirement to apply for a passport as a citizen, naturalized or not. Furthermore, there was no provocation for discrimination. Whether our sheriff has the right to require that information from the general visiting public is for someone else to decide; but, through no fault of my own, I now find myself in a hostile work environment. I am being treated differently than my co-workers who are not naturalized even though we share our citizenship.

I came to this country as an immigrant over 34 years ago. I became a citizen, I have a family, I vote, and pay taxes only to be treated like a second class citizen. I am not one to write frivolous letters but I am outraged, and everyone who cherishes the rights of citizenship should be outraged.

I have withheld the name of the employee for privacy reasons. However, if you are a member of the media (mainstream or otherwise) wishing to contact this person for an article, please e-mail me and I will put you in touch with him.