This is the third week of immigration sweeps by the maricopa county illegal sheriff's office. This time, they invaded the town of guadalupe, which is a really small town just south of tempe. The town mostly consists of yaqui and mexican migrant residents.
I urge you to read the sheriff's press release and then view these videos:
youtube video
channel 12 video
See what the mayor says about the press release, what the sheriff had told them, and how the mayor confronted sheriff joe. You can also read about the conflict on the feathered bastard's blog.
There's another video of what happened in guadalupe here. You will see that people were being pulled over for ridiculous things like "improper use of the horn" when they honked at the protesters in support.
Back in 2002, i believe, the sheriff's office invaded guadalupe after someone shot at either a deputy or the person the deputy was dealing with. Either way, the sheriff's office took it as an assault against the deputy, didn't catch the guy, but proceeded to bring their mobile command unit out to guadalupe and pull over nearly every single person. This past weekend was nearly a repeat, except there were many protesters, and because obviously shooting at someone is more of a crime than not having documents, the residents could get behind an opposition to the police.
Friday differed from thursday in that the police did not set up their command center in town on friday, but rather brought their arrestees to a station in mesa. They also didn't pull as many people over. There were also less protesters, partly because there was a big church service, and probably also because there were less people being arrested.
Signs at the protests and left on the streets included, "Arpaio, stop using guadalupe", "Our people deserve respect," "You're on indian land. The only illegal here is arpaio."
