This note comes to us from the Rev. Trina Zelle, who works with Interfaith Worker Justice of Arizona – and also serves as Co-Moderator of the Witherspoon Society

Hi Doug -- I thought I'd send you a copy of the letter we've been circulating here in protest of a hotline set up by the County Sheriff so people can turn in others that they suspect of being undocumented immigrants. So far we have 40 plus signatures including the United Methodist Bishop and many clergy. AP has already picked up a story on it as has the local paper. We are continuing to gather signatures and will present it to him in person early next week. If you want to publish it on our website that's fine. If people want to add their names to it, they can contact me:

Rev. Trina Zelle
Interfaith Worker Justice of Arizona
2510 Rural Road
Tempe, AZ 85284
tzelle@iwj.org

Dear Sheriff Arpaio:

As people of faith and conscience, we decry your announcement of a telephone hotline to be used by residents to report information or evidence relating to crimes involving illegal immigration or smuggling. In setting up such a hotline and publicly declaring it to be a weapon against illegal immigration, its worst use will be to incite neighbor against neighbor.

We come from communities of faith and conscience wherein law officers serve the important role of creating peace in the community. Inviting the residents of Maricopa County to report information about or evidence of crimes related to illegal immigration creates fear and tension in the community and thus achieves precisely the opposite effect: far from your role as a peace officer and in direct opposition to your stated desire to protect the residents of Maricopa County. As people of faith and conscience, we believe that a measure of a government is in its protection of its most vulnerable residents. We believe that by opening such a hotline to the general public, persons of obvious ethnic identity will be "turned in" on the basis of little more than their skin color. Since it has been publicly stated that there is no current protocol in place for determining the legitimacy of such calls, the potential for abuses of the human and civil rights of our most vulnerable residents rises to an intolerable level.

As faith leaders and residents of Maricopa County, we suggest that citizen crime reporting is already accomplished under your other hotlines, ones that do not have the potential to target vulnerable residents. The new mechanism has an intolerable potential to intimidate and ostracize one particular ethnic group. During the early phase of the program, while its details are being ironed out, hundreds of innocent victims will likely be created, including the dependents of the wrongfully detained. In all faith understandings, there is a core tradition of reaching out to help the least among us. How shameful it would be for your priority, the "crime of the week," focus on harming the poorest members of our very wealthy county. Our primary objection to your new program is its inconsistency with the MCSO goal posted on your website: "the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office prides itself on serving and protecting the people who live in a huge county…" Part of your job to protect Maricopa County residents will now include weeding out cases in which neighbors turn on each other.

We are asking you to please remove the hotline specifically related to immigration. While our nation waits for the federal government to fix a broken immigration policy, it is unconscionable for local law enforcement agencies to launch headlong into measures such as your illegal immigration hotline that target our most vulnerable residents.

Yours in faith,

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