The ads, which will also run in Las Vegas and Denver, are meant to capitalize on anger by Latinos at a rash of harsh anti-immigration statements by Republican politicians. In addition to Arizona’s recent efforts to curb illegal immigration through its contested SB 1070 immigration law, Republican politicians have released a spate of ads attacking their opponents for immigration policy using images of Latinos, leading to charges of racism.

While Latinos largely identify as Democrats, recent nationwide polls indicate registered Latino voters have lower enthusiasm for this election than voters overall. Other progressive organizations have also rallied behind immigration causes to try to mobilize Latino voters. Immigrants rights groups purchased Spanish-language ads in a number of states tying the Republican Party to anti-immigrant fear-mongering.

The program, which was created in 1996, allows the Department of Homeland Security to train local law enforcement to enforce immigration law. It has been criticized by immigrant rights groups and a 2009 Government Accountability Office report for leading to deportation of low-level criminal offenders — minor violations of traffic and open-container laws — instead of focusing on serious crime by illegal immigrants.

Critics also argue it leads to racial profiling, particularly among Latinos, and creates a fear of police in immigrant communities. Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., has been accused of abusing the 287 (g) program to carry out controversial sweeps of immigrant-heavy neighborhoods. Arpaio’s office was limited to using the program only in jails — not to make arrests — in 2009.

In Georgia, the program has been used to identify more than 14,690 illegal immigrants for deportation in its four years in the state, ICE officials told the Associated Press. Four counties in the state, and its Department for Public Safety, have signed agreements to participate in the program.

The AP has more on the lawsuit:

The lawsuit alleges ICE has failed to train, supervise and otherwise oversee sheriff’s deputies in Cobb County, where the three plaintiffs live. It also claims ICE has improperly delegated its power to local authorities.

“This is a bad thing, and it tears apart families,” said attorney Erik Meder, who filed the lawsuit. “While these people are certainly in the country illegally, they aren’t criminals and don’t deserve to be locked up and separated from their families.”

Immigration officials have broad discretionary power and should not be issuing a notice to appear — which initiates deportation proceedings — for illegal immigrants who are arrested and discovered to be in the country illegally after initially having been stopped for relatively minor offenses, the lawsuit says.

All told, it’s a pretty grim outlook, even if the piece is overly brief on whether these fears have any basis in fact:

Then the recession hit and Maricopa began topping lists of counties with the most foreclosures, and Arizona began topping lists of states with the biggest budget gaps. And then came the immigration law, which would require police to check the status of people they stop and suspect of being in the U.S. illegally. While lawyers will continue to debate the measure in court, it already has had a practical, even psychological effect.

Among its supporters, there is a sense of moral certitude, a mood championed by the county’s sheriff, Joe Arpaio, who has become a national hero to some by vowing to continue his sweeps for illegal immigrants – spectacular events in which deputies fan out into mostly Hispanic neighborhoods, at times wearing ski-type masks. Recently, Arpaio called for a citizen “enforcement posse,” a force of 500 people who will be outfitted, he said, with their own guns and helicopters.

This is why, among Hispanic families, the mood is one of nervousness verging at times on paranoia. And why adjustments are being made to hundreds of thousands of complicated lives.

Of course, the story only focuses on one woman, but it’s nevertheless interesting to note that some illegal immigrants are continuing to leave Arizona even after a federal judge blocked most of the controversial portions of SB 1070. So far, there have been no official statistics on how many people may have left Arizona due to the law, but anecdotal evidence such as lower enrollment in predominately Latino schools points to at least some departures. This could have unintended negative consequences for Arizona, as the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute’s Marc Rosenblum told me in August: “Businesses are feeling an impact, both because they may find a shortage of workers but also a shortage of customers.”

That wasn’t all, Talking Points Memo reported:

Excerpts of the reports, obtained by TPMMuckraker, show officials from Arpaio’s office made trips to Orlando, D.C., Honduras, Tempe, Belize, Alaska and Puerto Rico on the county’s dime and racked up other questionable expenses, like $741 at Sardella’s Pizza and Wings. The county was also charged $350 for a hotel room upgrade for one official’s spouse. One employee went on multiple extradition trips without submitting receipts for the $62,750 he or she spent — including $1,341 on Disney World Yacht Club Resort food and entertainment. [...]

County officials additionally allege that the sheriff’s office deliberately misused procurement codes and made capital purchases during spending freezes; used outside bank accounts; had problems handling inmate cash; demonstrated extradition travel irregularities; improperly used county credit cards; and spent public funds unusually.

The officials’ report comes less than a week after an internal memo from a subordinate was released urging Arpaio to stop corruption within the sheriff’s department. It is also in the midst of a Justice Department investigation into alleged civil rights abuses by Arpaio’s office. The DOJ sued Arpaio earlier this month for refusing to hand over documents for its investigation.

Notably, Arpaio received a favorable audit from the U.S. Marshal Service on how he treats his inmates, the Wall Street Journal reported today.

Arpaio, who was first elected Maricopa County sheriff in 1993, seems to think he has substantial political clout, the Huffington Post reported:

Earlier this year, in squashing speculation that he might run for Governor in the Grand Canyon State, the Arizona sheriff said, “I don’t want to be egotistical, but I could be the governor if I ran… My polls are very high. I got the money. I got the polls. I got the support.” And, Arpaio recently said that he considers his endorsement cred to be stronger than that of home state GOP Sen. John McCain.

Last month, the Arizona sheriff suggested President Obama consult his advice on the issue of illegal immigration.

If he were a serious candidate, he would have some hurdles. For one, Arpaio was sued last week by the Justice Department for refusing to cooperate with a probe into alleged civil rights violations within his department. He also has a reputation of being extremely tough on illegal immigration — a reason for his popularity among some, but possibly a liability overall. Arpaio has run raids to track down illegal immigrants, forced inmates into tents when jails were full and made prisoners wear pink underwear as a humiliation tactic.

A new 527 group was created this week to defend Arpaio’s reputation, Talking Points Memo reported. Called “Defend Sheriff Joe,” the group said in its filing it aims to “defend Sheriff Joe’s reputation against the Obama administration’s effort to stop enforcement of our immigration laws and to challenge elected officials so that more representatives are elected who are willing to enforce our laws and support the police on the front lines.”

Arpaio still hasn’t handed over the documents, and the lawyers at Justice must have been sick of waiting — the DOJ filed a suit against the sheriff this morning.

The investigation — and ensuing lawsuit — could have serious consequences for Maricopa County. Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, programs that receive federal funds cannot discriminate. If Arpaio’s immigration sweeps are determined to be discriminatory against Latinos, the county could lose some federal funding, the Arizona Republic reported:

The sheriff’s failure to cooperate could cost the county millions of dollars of federal funding. Last year, the county received $113 million in federal funds, according to county records; of that, the Sheriff’s Office received $3.8 million. County officials must agree that they will not discriminate in order to receive those funds. [...]

Last year, the nearly $113 million that the county received from the federal government accounted for about 5 percent of the county’s $2 billion budget. Arpaio’s office said it receives $3 million to $4 million each year in federal funds.

Authorities in Arizona are now facing three separate lawsuits from the Justice Department related to immigration. Along with the lawsuit against Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law, the department filed a suit Monday alleging discriminatory hiring practices by Phoenix-area Maricopa Community Colleges.

Justice officials said Phoenix-area Maricopa Community Colleges violated the federal Immigration and Nationality Act by requiring noncitizens to provide green cards before they could be hired, the Washington Post reported. The suit argues the community colleges went beyond the legal requirements for determining eligibility status in its requirements of nearly 250 noncitizen job applicants, the Washington Post reported:

The law’s antidiscrimination provision “makes it unlawful to treat authorized workers differently during the hiring process based on their citizenship status,” said Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for Justice’s Civil Rights Division. He said the government “is acting now to remedy this pattern or practice of discrimination.” [...]

It is the latest example of stepped-up enforcement by the department’s Civil Rights Division, which has been reshaping itself after an exodus of lawyers during the Bush administration. It filed a similiar lawsuit in April against John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Arizona authorities already face a Justice Department lawsuit against the state’s SB 1070 immigration law. Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the controversial head of law enforcement in Maricopa County, is under investigation by the Justice Department for allegations of discrimination.

The Civil Rights Division investigation is looking into claims of “discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures” by Arpaio’s department, according to the Post. Arpaio has claimed since 2009 the he is being investigated for political reasons. On August 5, his lawyer accused the Justice Department trying to coerce him into cooperating with the civil rights investigation. “DOJ cannot require the reproduction of millions of pages of documents so DOJ can ‘see what it can find,’” his attorney wrote.

He still has not turned over documents to the DOJ:

Arpaio’s resistance is highly unusual: Justice Department officials said even the threat of such a lawsuit is rare. They added that they plan to meet with Arpaio’s lawyers next week in a last-ditch effort to forestall litigation. If the Justice Department eventually files a broader civil lawsuit, it could result in the department terminating the several million dollars in grants to Arpaio’s office each year or a judge’s order forcing him to change his policies.

Arpaio is also being investigated by a grand jury seeking to determine whether he abused his power to intimidate political opponents. Arpaio’s lawyers told the Post he is cooperating fully with the grand jury investigation.

In Virginia, a $21 million center will soon house up to 584 detainees, with possible plans to expand to 1,000 detainees in its first year. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Assistant Director Robert Helwig said the new facility is needed to deal with the “surge in detainees” that will come from Secure Communities’ recent expansion in the state. Virginia and Washington, D.C., have already seen a huge increase in the number of illegal immigrants detained:

With three months left in the fiscal year, the number of illegal immigrants with criminal convictions detained in Virginia and the District has increased by 50 percent from last year’s total, to 2,414. Those numbers are expected to increase now that the program is being implemented statewide. …

There’s one point on which experts across the spectrum agree: Without additional detention space, the program cannot function. ICE has detained fewer than one-quarter of the immigrants identified by Secure Communities, a range of suspected criminals facing charges as varied as misdemeanors and murder.

In Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio has a different approach to dealing with the influx of detainees: tents. Arpaio said he has room for at least 1,000 new prisoners in tents in the desert, a “Tent City” in triple-digit temperatures he has operated since 1993. His motives may be less pure than simply finding a place to put detainees:

“I put them up next to the dump, the dog pound, the waste-disposal plant,” Arpaio once said of his tactics, which have also included chain gangs (for men and women), public parades in pink underwear (for men only), and massive illegal immigration sweeps. Arpaio’s tactics have earned him the nickname “Hitler” among Tent City inmates, according to The New Yorker. They’ve also have prompted thousands of lawsuits against “America’s Toughest Sheriff,” as well as a federal investigation into his immigration sweeps. “Sheriff Arpaio has absolute contempt for the dignity of the people in his custody and demonstrates this by treating people like circus animals,” the ACLU wrote on its blog.

As Sam Stein points out at Huffington Post, it’s important not to make too big a leap — the America’s Voice message that SB 1070 could lead to a surge in violent crime statewide seems a step too far. Still, the graph gives some evidence against claims that tougher policies are needed to prevent violent crime by illegal immigrants.