Arpaio Has Harsh Words for Obama, Says He'll Go to Federal Court if He Has To

At a conference held Thursday to address the Justice Department's recent report, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio had some harsh words for, who he called, "Obama and his merry men." Arpaio was defending himself agaisnt accusations of civil rights violations found by the DOJ investigation that accused his department of a pattern or practice of unconstitutional policing, including racial profiling in traffic stops and discriminating against Spanish speakers in the county jails. "This is a sad day for America as a whole" Arpaio said at the press conference before going on to say the Obama administration is trying to put him out of business. A transcripts from Arpaio's conference is below:  Today federal government moved to do everything it can to put this agency out of the illegal immigration enforcement business. We are proud of the work we have done to fight illegal immigration: we have been responsible for finding and identifying 25% of the nations illegal alien criminal offenders in our jails. Sadly, much of that work will no longer be permitted by the Obama administration. Today, the federal government has canceled our 287(g) agreement--what that means is that we are no longer able to verify immigration status of any criminal offender brought into our jails. This is a program responsible for detecting over 44,000 illegal alien criminal offenders since 2007, many of whom we can assume were deported by ICE officials back to their country of origin. Now with the cancellation of this agreement, illegal criminal offenders arrested and brought it to our jails will go undetective and ultimately dumped back out to the streets near you, for that you can thank your federal government. By their actions today President Obama and the band of his merry men, might as well erect their own pink neon sign that the Arizona Mexico border saying 'welcome all illegals to your United States, our home is your home.' Arpaio faces a January 4th deadline to decide whether he wants to work out an agreement with the Justice Department to make changes to end the discrimination. If not, the federal government will sue him, possibly putting in jeopardy millions of dollars in federal funding for Maricopa County. "We are going to cooperate the best we can. And if they are not happy, I guess they can carry out their threat and go to federal court," Arpaio went on to say.

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