Sheriff: Big Change in Immigration Enforcement

PHOENIX -- Sheriff Joe Arpaio held a press conference Monday afternoon to announce some big changes in the way he enforces immigration laws.

The sheriff is under investigation by the Justice Department for racial profiling, and has taken heat for his crime suppression sweeps. But Arpaio still says he won't back down, despite the fact the government has stripped some of his power from him.

Deputies to receive training

Arpaio says that every MCSO deputy will receive training to find and detain illegal immigrants, and be taught to avoid racial profiling.

But critics say, that training will come too late. A civil lawsuit is claiming MCSO is racially profiling -- pulling over Hispanics solely because they look Hispanic.

MCSO has hired a professor of immigration law, Kris Kobach, to lead the training. He says that deputies have the inherent authority to detain suspected illegal immigrants.

"There's a whole series of factors that the courts have recognized over the years. These factors create part of a composite picture. If you have multiple factors indicating an individual is unlawfully present, that's when suspicion arises," he says.

All 881 deputies will receive special training to enforce immigration law. But the sheriff is assuring the public, it won't take their focus off other investigations.

"We are not sending 900 deputies to the streets of Phoenix and everywhere else to enforce illegal immigration. We do have other duties... pursuant to their duties, if they come across that situation, they are trained and will know how to take action," says Sheriff Arpaio.

Racial profiling lawsuit

The racial profiling allegations may be hard to prove -- because the Sheriff's office is admitting it shredded hundreds of documents -- "stat sheets" that could've provided some answers.

A lawyer for MCSO confirms that hundreds of stat sheets have been destroyed. Stat sheets detail who was pulled over and why, and provides information on people even if they weren't cited or arrested.

Attorney Peter Kozinets says it may have been done intentionally, and proving the racial profiling claim will be harder if part of the paper trail has been destroyed.

"We believe this is not merely some sort of mistake. Rather, the office engaged in at least gross negligence if not intentional destruction of documents."

Kozinets is suing the sheriff's office on behalf of several people who say they were pulled over because they're Hispanic.

When the suit was filed two years ago, MCSO was ordered to turn over all documents related to their crime suppression operations, including the stat sheets every deputy fills out in the field.

Instead about a thousand of those stat sheets were shredded. Kozinets says they could have contained critical evidence.

"Studying those stat sheets, comparing them would enable us to show that officers were engaging in a form of selective enforcement."

Attorneys representing the Sheriff's office say those documents were mistakenly destroyed. There are also hundreds of emails between sheriff's deputies that were supposed to be turned over to attorneys, but they are also now missing. MCSO says there wasn't anything relevant in those emails.

A federal judge is now trying to decide whether or not to punish the Sheriff's office for shredding those documents.

The Sheriff also announced Monday that witnesses to crimes and victims of crimes won't be guaranteed protection if they happen to be illegal immigrants.