Famously Racist Sheriff Sues the President Over Immigration Reform
When we last checked in with Arizona Sheriff and hemorrhoid cream advertisement “before” picture Joe Arpaio, he was still terrible, shackling pregnant inmates while they’re giving birth, creating a pedophile- and criminal-riddled “posse” to police Maricopa County’s schools, and, of course, his trademark, being as frequently racist as the laws of time and space will allow. In the service of that goal, as soon as President Barack Obama announced his plans yesterday to use executive action to enact some broad immigration reforms, Arpaio sued him, saying they are unconstitutional.
Obama’s immigration reform plan doesn’t create a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, although it will shield many from deportation and create a system for them to receive Social Security cards and be able to work legally. In what New York magazine notes was probably not an accident, Obama first quoted President George W. Bush and then one of the most powerful passages in the book of Exodus, saying, “Scripture tells us that we shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger — we were strangers once, too.”
But none of that is good enough for Arpaio, who filed a federal complaint in a Washington district court, calling Obama’s immigration reforms “unconstitutional abuses of the President’s role in our nation’s constitutional architecture and exceed the powers of the President within the U.S. Constitution.”
And if there’s anyone who knows a thing or two about unconstitutional abuses, it’s inmate-starving, medical-care denying, racial profiling fan Joe Arpaio.
Image via AP