Maricopa County Sheriff Arpaio is disappointed in Democrat presidential candidate Martin O’Malley, who was in front of the 4th Ave jail, to denounce federally run illegal immigrant detention centers.
Arpaio says that O’Malley “seems to have been misled in selecting the jail site for his speech.”
“What O’Malley missed was an opportunity to hear about the problem of people in the country illegally who commit crimes, and then being turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation, continually coming back to the jails,” said Arpaio. “For two years now, I have been informing the Secretary of Homeland Security and ICE Officials of this increasingly troubling situation.” Arpaio had invited O’Malley to visit the Sheriff in his Tent City Jail during his visit to the Valley.
Sheriff Arpaio has previously reported that of the approximately 7,000 inmates charged with various crimes in Maricopa County while in the country illegally from 2014 to 2015, and subsequently handed over to ICE, approximately 3,000 have returned to his jails to be booked on new charges.
“We also have had quite a few inmates in our jails during 2015 whose countries of origin are on the terrorist watch list, like Iran, Sudan and Syria,” Arpaio continued.
“They are incarcerated because they’ve committed serious crimes and should not be allowed to just return to the streets of America.” The Maricopa County Jail system also holds inmates from other countries that are under scrutiny for terrorist activity including Afghanistan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Somalia, and Iraq.
“These are dangerous times that require critical discussions regarding illegal immigration and terrorism,” Arpaio concluded.