By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Four men were shot in the desert, two of them fatally, in drug-smuggling violence near Gila Bend, Ariz., on April 27, while two additional men ran away, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) reported from its Phoenix headquarters.
Sun-baked little Gila Bend is about a 90-minute drive north of Mexico, which bristles with drug doings. Phoenix is about an additional hour northeast of Gila (pronounced HEE-la) Bend.
This was part of a busy drug-smuggling week, the sheriff’s office said in an April 28 news release that provided the following information.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio said he wasn’t surprised. “Violence and the drug business go hand-in-hand, and unless we intensify our efforts to stop the traffic coming in from Mexico, violence will escalate.”
Weapons and drugs were found. A sheriff’s SWAT team arrived to secure the area so homicide investigators could do their work safely.
This was activity in just a short stretch north of the long border that the United States shares with Mexico.
There were three significant drug seizures near Gila Bend during the week as MCSO worked with the Border Patrol. Drugs both were carried and loaded on all-terrain vehicles by smugglers.
Before the deep summer heat arrives, Arpaio said, “cartels intensify their smuggling efforts, and we are witnessing that here.”
On April 21, seven suspects were arrested at night carrying seven bundles of marijuana weighing about 400 pounds.
One day later, five men were arrested with 163 pounds of marijuana, also near Gila Bend.
The drugs in these two hauls were valued at about a half-million dollars.
On the night of April 26 deputies seized an all-terrain vehicle with an additional 400 pounds of the drug, although the driver apparently had fled.
“With that kind of money at stake,” Arpaio said, “you can be sure the cartels will not stop unless we force them to.”
The day after the April 28 news release with these facts, MCSO issued another news release April 29, reporting more criminal activity. Ten additional suspects were arrested in the same area and 461 pounds of marijuana were seized, it said.
Despite the “veritable shoot-out in the desert” that left two dead and two wounded on April 27, Arpaio said, “more drug smugglers poured into the area the very next day. It’s a well-traveled and dangerous drug corridor which I predict will continue to see more and more violence.”
And all this just about an hour’s drive from the metropolitan Phoenix area with its millions of residents.
Most residents likely would say very strict law enforcement is desperately needed to shield them from unending waves of defiant illegal entrants, many of whom come to break more laws.
Millions of illegal immigrants have poured through the Grand Canyon State, some staying here, many going farther. They’ve been told they should have little to fear here.
From Phoenix courtrooms to the White House and Congress, border jumpers are assured that the door is wide open. He who would dare lock it may end up locked away himself as a practitioner of “discrimination.” Law enforcement is under sterner scrutiny than illegal aliens.
It’s not enough that Arpaio has to contend with dangerous lawbreakers once they reach Maricopa County. He’s also fighting for his career against a grim, powerful Arizona establishment of open-borders true believers determined to help shake up and remake not merely Arizona but North America.
Quite a transformative task. Some bishops, unfortunately, bless their open-borders faith.
In recent years these believers successfully contrived to recall an Arizona Senate president and disbar a former chief prosecutor of Maricopa County, both of whom were known for strongly opposing massive illegal immigration, and were made to pay an unjust price. Arpaio is the last standing member of this border-protecting triumvirate.
Media consumers can sense the glee in stories that anticipate the day Arpaio himself goes to jail for criminal contempt.
On April 23 Arpaio was on the stand in Phoenix before U.S. District Judge Murray Snow, who, using his own judgmentalism, has hounded Arpaio and his department as racial profilers who must not enforce federal immigration law.
Snow’s questioning took a surprise turn that went outside established courtroom procedures of evidence and advance notice. On April 29 the Arizona Republic posted a story saying Arpaio attorney Michele Iafrate “filed an objection that challenged the court’s line of questioning.”
The judge appeared to be fishing around on April 23, and may have hooked something he didn’t expect or want. Snow asked Arpaio if the sheriff was aware of anyone investigating him, the judge. Arpaio replied he’d received a tip that Snow’s wife said Snow “wanted to do everything to make sure I’m not elected.”
A bombshell that, if true, should serve to remove the judge as biased in the case.
Arpaio continued that a private investigator subsequently looked into the wife’s remark, adding, “I guess [the investigator] talked to the witness, confirmed that that remark was made.”
The power of this testimony was evident by the way liberal media buried or ignored it.
On April 24 the Los Angeles Times posted a 29-paragraph story by its reporter John Glionna that dripped with contempt for Arpaio but omitted this key fact.
Glionna’s story said Arpaio “admitted under oath that his former lawyer had authorized a secret investigation of the wife of U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow, the one presiding over the contempt-of-court case, perched on the bench just a few feet away from Arpaio.”
Arpaio simply said an investigator checked on this statement — concerning whether the man isn’t impartial who’s sitting in judgment on him, his financial condition, and even his freedom.
But the Los Angeles Times claimed that Arpaio’s sworn testimony revealed “a secret investigation” of the wife, leaving readers to wonder whether Arpaio was rifling through her checkbooks, her school transcripts, her telephone records, her hotel bills, or what — and for what ill purpose? Extortion? Intimidation?
The anti-Arpaio Arizona Republic, the Grand Canyon State’s largest daily, similarly spun its front-page coverage so that the wife was the aggrieved party, not Arpaio. The Republic showed no interest in determining whether the powerful assertion against Snow might be true.
But Republic self-censorship couldn’t quell others’ curiosity.
On May 2 the conservative Sonoran Alliance blog posted an article headlined, “Ethics attorneys: Judge Snow must recuse himself from Sheriff Arpaio’s case.”
Citing the reported comment by Snow’s wife that the judge hated Arpaio and didn’t want him re-elected, the article said, “We talked to some attorneys who practice ethics law, and they agreed” that it’s proper to check whether a judge is motivated by personal animus.
“We also asked them if Judge Snow is required to recuse himself from the case due to the alleged statements by his wife as well as Arpaio hiring a [private investigator], and they unanimously agreed he must, according to judicial ethics rules, but none of them dared go on the record due to fear of retaliation by Snow,” the article said.
“One candidly told us,” the article said, “they believe Snow was assigned to this case to ‘make sure Joe goes down’ and will not recuse himself for any reason, he’s in this to win it and to ‘destroy Joe’.”
The Sonoran Alliance blog also linked to an article at the Arizona Public Media site, which draws from the public media services PBS and NPR.
That article pondered possible ethical complexities and quoted New York University law Professor Stephen Gillers: “If this lawyer believed that there was some evidence of personal animus on the part of Judge Snow toward his client, then investigation within certain bounds is entirely appropriate.”
The Wanderer telephoned Arpaio attorney Michele Iafrate’s office twice, on May 1 and May 4, and each time was connected to her voicemail by a receptionist. The attorney didn’t respond.
This newspaper wanted to ask if there is any plan to seek a recusal or other action concerning Snow, as well as to seek elaboration on Iafrate’s reported complaint about Snow going outside established courtroom procedures.
Earlier, The Wanderer repeatedly asked Arpaio’s media office whether the sheriff had any plan to seek a recusal or other action against Snow remaining on the case. An Arpaio spokesman finally just said to contact Iafrate.
So Many Want Amnesty
Rob Haney, the retired chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Party, told The Wanderer on May 5 that this case against Arpaio “shouldn’t have proceeded….There’s so much corruption in the judiciary. There are so many people there that want amnesty.”
He said Arpaio previously explained that his deputies followed federal training they received about detaining people, but Snow in 2013 concluded this still violated the U.S. Constitution.
A Los Angeles Times story posted May 24, 2013, said Snow “issued an order immediately and permanently barring the sheriff’s office from detaining or arresting Latinos or stopping Latinos in vehicles simply because of a suspicion they may be in the country illegally.”
Which may help explain why Arpaio’s deputies had to be out in force again on the desert around Gila Bend in late April 2015, dealing with drug smugglers who feel encouraged to roam.
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