Sheriff Joe Arpaio: No One Is Saying I Can't Lock Up "Illegal Aliens"

Sheriff Joe Arpaio:

All I can say to all of you is that we're gonna continue our operations, nothing will change tomorrow or as we continue our fight against illegal immigration...

You know what, I took an oath of office I'm gonna enforce the laws as long as they're on the books and if they take them off the books and don't enforce it, I won't enforce it.  But nobody says I can't go out tomorrow and do what I plan on doing and lock up people that violate the law, and if they're illegal aliens we're gonna take care of that. Who's sayin' that we can't do that?

Any police officer that arrests anybody for any charge — any charge — book 'em into our jail, we are going to investigate that person to see if they are here illegally and if they are here illegally we're going to put the hold on them until the case has been adjudicated...

I'm not really disappointed, she made the ruling, it's really not gonna affect our operations.  It may affect the local police who some don't really want to enforce illegal immigration laws anyway, there have been some chiefs of police, some sheriffs that we don't really like to do this for many, many reasons. But they may be happy with this. I'm sure the cops on the beat aren't gonna be very happy, I'm sure they like to enforce illegal immigration laws, but that's not— that's up to the individual law enforcement agencies to decide what their policies are pursuant to this decision...

As far as I'm concerned, it's not gonna change our operations and we'll just have to keep— see what the appellate courts say as this probably moves up, may go to the Supreme Court.  I don't know.

via Washington Post