How does Barak Hussein Obama (peace be unto him), Eric Holder, and their Department of Justice reward a dedicated lawman for decades of service?   They sue him. 

The DOJ sued Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Thursday, claiming the Arizona lawman refused for more than a year to turn over records in an investigation into allegations his department discriminates against Hispanics.

The lawsuit calls Arpaio and his office’s defiance “unprecedented,” and claimed that the federal government has been trying since March 2009 to get officials to comply with its probe of alleged discrimination, unconstitutional searches and seizures, and having English-only policies in his jails that discriminate against people with limited English skills.

Wow.  You would think this is America…or sumpin’.

Arpaio had been given until Aug. 17 to hand over documents the DOJ asked for 15 months ago.

Sheriff Joe”s attorney, Robert Driscoll, would not comment on the lawsuit, saying he had just received it and hadn’t yet conferred with his client.

Arpaio’s office had said it has fully cooperated in the jail inquiry but won’t hand over additional documents into the examination of the alleged unconstitutional searches because federal authorities haven’t said exactly what they were investigating.

This is just the latest in a series of harassing actions taken against Arizona by our own federal government, which remains determined, regardless of what this administration publically says, to continue to allow the massive influx of illegal aliens across our Southern border..

Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for the department’s civil rights division claims:

The actions of the sheriff’s office are unprecedented .  It is unfortunate that the department was forced to resort to litigation to gain access to public documents and facilities.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix and names Arpaio, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and the county.

Many of the policies Arpaio has put into place in the greater Phoenix area are similar to Arizona’s new law, most of which a federal judge has put on hold.  Sheriff Joe has set up a hot line for the public to report immigration violations, conducts crime and immigration sweeps in heavily Latino neighborhoods and frequently raids workplaces for people in the U.S. illegally.

Oh, my gosh.  He actually enforces the law!  Oh, the horror!

Sheriff Joe rightfully believes that the inquiry is focused on his immigration sweeps, patrols where deputies flood an area of a city, in some cases heavily Latino areas, to seek out traffic violators and arrest other offenders.

Critics complain that his deputies pull people over for minor traffic infractions because of the color of their skin so they can ask them for their proof of citizenship.

Arpaio denies these allegations of racial profiling, saying people are stopped if deputies have probable cause to believe they’ve committed crimes and that it’s only afterward that deputies find many of them are illegal immigrants.

According to Sheriff Joe’s office, half of the 1,032 people arrested in the sweeps have been illegal immigrants.

Last year, the Obama administration stripped Arpaio of his special power to enforce federal immigration law. The sheriff continued his sweeps through the enforcement of state immigration laws.

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.

In a separate investigation, a federal grand jury in Phoenix is examining allegations that Arpaio has abused his powers with actions such as intimidating county workers by showing up at their homes at nights and on weekends.

Can you say “witch hunt”?

Meanwhile, the federal government has posted signs along a major interstate highway in Arizona, more than 100 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, warning travelers the area is unsafe because of drug and alien smugglers.   According to a local sheriff, Mexican drug cartels are now in control of some parts of the state.

The signs were posted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) along a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 8 between Casa Grande and Gila Bend, a major east-west corridor linking Tucson and Phoenix with San Diego.

The signs caution travelers that they are entering an “active drug and human smuggling area” and they may encounter “armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high rates of speed.” Beginning less than 50 miles south of Phoenix, the signs encourage travelers to “use public lands north of Interstate 8” and to call 911 if they “see suspicious activity.”

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, whose county lies at the center of major drug and alien smuggling routes to Phoenix and cities east and west, has said that his deputies are outmanned and outgunned by drug traffickers in the rough-hewn desert stretches of his own county:

Mexican drug cartels literally control parts of Arizona.  They literally have scouts on the high points in the mountains and in the hills and they literally control movement. They have radios, they have optics, they have night-vision goggles as good as anything law enforcement has.

This is going on here in Arizona. This is 70 to 80 miles from the border – 30 miles from the fifth-largest city in the United States.

The sheriff said that he asked the Obama administration for 3,000 National Guard soldiers to patrol the border, but what he got were 15 signs.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer condemned what she called the federal government’s “continued failure to secure our international border,” saying the lack of security has resulted in important natural recreational areas in her state being declared too dangerous to visit.

In a recent campaign video posted on YouTube, Gov. Brewer – standing in front of one of the BLM signs – attacked the administration over the signs, calling them “an outrage” and telling President Obama to “Do your job. Secure our borders.”

BLM spokesman Dennis Godfrey in Arizona said agency officials were surprised by the reaction the signs generated when they were put up this summer.  Did he expect people to like under attack by Mexican Drug Lords?

By, hey, don’t worry.  Obama and Holder are on the case.  According to Sheriff  Babeu, requests by Arizona law enforcement personnel and Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) for 3,000 National Guard troops along the state’s border with Mexico have been answered so far with 1 percent of that number deployed there this week:

 
We have a whopping 30 [National Guard troops] this week that are showing up.  It’s less than a half-hearted measure designed to fail.

Through their actions, this president and his administration have given the impression that they care more about the fictitious “civil rights” of those who have entered our county illegally than they do about the safety and welfare of citizens of the country that Obama swore an inaugural oath to.