JPI claims the private industry hasn’t merely responded to the nation’s incarceration woes, it has actively sought to create the market conditions (ie. more prisoners) necessary to expand its business.

According to JPI, the private prison industry uses three strategies to influence public policy: lobbying, direct campaign contributions, and networking. The three main companies have contributed $835,514 to federal candidates and over $6 million to state politicians. They have also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on direct lobbying efforts. CCA has spent over $900,000 on federal lobbying and GEO spent anywhere from $120,000 to $199,992 in Florida alone during a short three-month span this year. Meanwhile, “the relationship between government officials and private prison companies has been part of the fabric of the industry from the start,” notes the report. The cofounder of CCA himself used to be the chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party.

The impact that the private prison industry has had is hard to deny. In Arizona, 30 of the 36 legislators who co-sponsored the state’s controversial immigration law that would undoubtedly put more immigrants behind bars received campaign contributions from private prison lobbyists or companies. Private prison businesses been involved in lobbying efforts related to a bill in Florida that would require privatizing all of the prisons in South Florida and have been heavily involved in appropriations bills on the federal level.

Tracy Velázquez, executive director of JPI recommends that we “take a hard look at what the cost of this influence is, both to taxpayers and to the community as a whole, in terms of the policies being lobbied for and the outcomes for people put in private prisons.”

Several taxi companies and more than 2,000 cab drivers have filed their own lawsuit against the law. Their grievance has to do with a specific provision which would make it a misdemeanor to transport fewer than seven undocumented immigrants and a felony to drive any more than that. The cab drivers claim that this would burden them with the responsibility of checking the immigration status of each and every one of their passengers. (Not to mention the potential invasion of privacy that the law would inflict on their customers). The Atlanta Business Chronicle reports:

On Monday, an Atlanta attorney Quinton Washington of the law firm Bell & Washington LLC, WXIA reporter Jeff Hullinger there are unintended consequences of the law that could affect passengers. Washington said if a cab or limo drivers is pulled over for speeding, or for a broken taillight, police have the right to ask for proof of citizenship of passengers. [...]

A concern is that many immigrants use cabs to buy groceries and run other errands, and cab drivers don’t want to be responsible for asking all of them for documentation paperwork.

“It is our hope that the legislature and local law enforcement authorities would not seek to penalize drivers for simply taking people from point A to point B,” stated Washington.

The attorney in the suit also noted that the immigration law doesn’t just raise legal issues for the taxi cab industry, it also carries implications for public transportation workers and other transportation companies. “Right now MARTA could be fined under this,” Washington said. “They don’t have a common carrier exception for buses and MARTA, etc. They only have exceptions for people transporting known undocumented persons if they are going to judicial proceedings and told to do so by the courts.”

Along similar lines, during yesterday’s hearing, the federal judge also questioned whether U.S. citizens should be prosecuted for driving their undocumented immigrant parents to the grocery store. The judge indicated that he will issue his decision on whether to enjoin the law before July 1, when it is scheduled to take effect.

In one transcript, Beason and two other Republican legislators were talking about economic development in predominantly black Greene County and the customers at one of the county’s largest employers, the Greenetrack casino in Eutaw.

“That’s y’all’s Indians,” one Republican said.

“They’re aborigines, but they’re not Indians,” Beason replied. [...]

The transcripts also showed Beason and other Republicans talking about what would happen if the legislation to protect electronic bingo casinos were approved by the Legislature and placed before voters in the election in November 2010. They speculated that casino owners would offer free meals and free bus rides to get black voters to the polls.

Under questioning, Beason said they were concerned that a large black turnout would hurt Republican candidates.

When pressed on his comments, Beason explained, “I don’t know what I meant at the time.” “I don’t use that term normally. I don’t know where it even came from that day,” he said in federal court. Democrats have called on Beason to resign. The federal judge in the bingo trial case will allow defense lawyers to question witnesses about Beason’s “racially charged” statements.

Back in February, Beason warned Republicans that immigration will “destroy a community” and advised his colleagues to “empty the clip and do what has to be done.” Beason later insisted that his comments were taken out of context and that he was using an analogy, not urging violence. He has also been leading the charge to redraw district lines in a way that would significantly dilute the power of black voters.

In one instance, Forcelli argued in favor of tougher gun laws:

REP. CAROLYN MALONEY (D): District court judges view these [straw purchase] prosecutions as mere paper violations. Have you heard this criticism before?

FORCELLI: I have and I agree with it. I think that perhaps a mandatory minimum one year sentence might deter an individual from buying a gun. Some people view this as no more consequential than doing 65 in a 55.

In another, Forcelli admitted that his agency simply doesn’t have the resources it needs to be effective:

REP. GERALD CONNELLY (D-VA): Do you really have the resources you need to do your job?

FORCELLI: It’s amazing, sir, that you ask me that… [...] I have less than 100 agents assigned to the entire State of Arizona, that’s 114,006 square miles. So do we have the resources, no we don’t. We desperately need them.

Watch it:

Issa jumped in to remind Forcelli that his assessment fell “outside the scope” of the hearing and “would not be considered valid testimony.”

Issa’s hearings on the gunrunner operation come just a few months after the NRA requested “expedited” hearings on the issue, in hopes that the it would reportedly “help kill a request from federal regulators for more authority to track gun purchases in the southern border states.” This past May, at the NRA’s annual convention, the powerful gun lobby group called for the resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder over the ATF operation.

Ironically, the NRA lobby itself has been blamed for weakening the ATF and rendering it leaderless since 2006. “The gun lobby has consistently outmaneuvered and hemmed in ATF, using political muscle to intimidate lawmakers and erect barriers to tougher gun laws,” reported the Washington Post. “Over nearly four decades, the NRA has wielded remarkable influence over Congress, persuading lawmakers to curb ATF’s budget and mission and to call agency officials to account at oversight hearings.”

Rather than further debilitating the agency, Democrats have promoted the strengthening of “toothless” U.S. gun laws in conjunction with a probe into the ATF’s gunrunner activities.

Like the bill that Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) signed into law last year, Alabama’s immigration measure requires local law enforcement to ask about immigration status when police have “reasonable suspicion” that the person they have stopped for some other violation is also an undocumented immigrant. Similarly, the law allows police to detain suspected undocumented immigrants and makes it a crime to employ or transport them. In its lawsuit against the state of Arizona, the Department of Justice claims that these provisions are preempted and conflict with federal priorities. These parts of SB-1070 have been enjoined by two separate courts on the basis that they are unconstitutional.

The courts will likely find even more issues with the law Alabama just passed. Under this law, Alabama schools will now have to collect student citizenship information. The lawyers behind this type of legislation have already made clear that their goal is to “take on” Plyler v. Doe, a Supreme Court decision which struck down a state statute denying education funding to undocumented children.

In the majority opinion, Justice William Brennan wrote that the “denial of education to some isolated group of children poses an affront to one of the goals of the Equal Protection Clause: the abolition of governmental barriers presenting unreasonable obstacles to advancement on the basis of individual merit.” The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has already made clear that “student enrollment practices that may chill or discourage” school enrollment based on immigration status is a violation of federal law.

Many Alabama school officials are worried that the new law will do just that. “Once you start asking that question, you get to the point where you’re tacitly trying to deny access to school,” explained an attendance coordinator for Elmore County Public Schools. Even in Arizona, an attempt to institute this policy failed miserably.

Alabama’s law also requires state employers to use the controversial electronic employment verification system, E-Verify, and will revoke the businesses licenses of those who fail to comply. This is probably one of the only parts of Alabama’s measure that will remain intact. That is because Arizona passed a separate piece of legislation with a similar mandate a couple of years ago, and last week the Supreme Court ruled in its favor, upholding a decision made by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Yet people shouldn’t read too much into that. The same appeals court also imposed a preliminary injunction on parts of SB-1070 on the basis that it “interferes with the federal government’s authority to implement its priorities and strategies in law enforcement” is likely preempted by federal law and foreign policy.

In addition, Alabama has made it illegal for landlords to “knowingly” rent housing to undocumented immigrants. The Third US Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a similar law from going into effect in Hazleton, Pennsylvania on the basis of federal preemption. The Supreme Court recently vacated the decision, but that likely has more to do with the Hazleton law’s E-Verify provisions which mirror the Arizona law that the Court recently reviewed.

The DOJ says that the arguments in the legal brief speak for themselves, but Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne (R) thinks there are more cynical politics at play. Yesterday, Horne accused President Obama of standing in the way of his state’s voter ID law because he wants “illegals” to be able to vote for him:

Horne, a Republican, told Capitol Media Services he sees something more sinister.

“I think the motive is that the more illegals that vote, the better the Obama administration thinks it will do,’’ he said. As proof, Horne pointed out that the Department of Justice did not file its friend of the court brief until just last week. That is nearly three years after the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund and others first challenged the law. More to the point, Horne said, is that the administration waited until virtually the last minute: The case is set to be heard in just two weeks.

Logically, Horne’s reasoning falls flat. Undocumented immigrants usually prefer to keep a low profile and probably wouldn’t risk getting detected just to their name on the voter rolls. The notion that Obama would actually invite the controversy that massive voter fraud in Arizona would create around his reelection bid is even more ludicrous.

Horne is convinced that “illegals are voting and they shouldn’t be voting.” He blames the problem on organizations like ACORN and insists that the burden of the voter ID law’s requirements “is miniscule.” MALDEF attorney Nina Perales claims that Horne is misrepresenting a series of “scattered incidents’’ involving people who thought they were eligible to register to vote, did register, and later found that they were not eligible.

While Horne claims that there have been 200 incidents of non-citizens registering to vote (only a handful of which were prosecuted), he may want to pay more attention to the massive number of citizens who are being disenfranchised by the new law. The Arizona Advocacy Network claims that it has “already barred tens of thousands of citizens from exercising their most basic right in a democracy, the right to vote.” Most notably, Native Americans, the poor, the disabled, the elderly, some young voters, and a 97 year-old citizen.

The full 9th Circuit has agreed to reconsider the 2010 ruling by the three-judge panel.

Expedited court hearings along the border are a major force driving a seismic demographic shift in who is being sent to federal prison. Statistics released this week revealed that Hispanics now comprise nearly half of all people sentenced for federal felony crimes, a number swollen by immigration offenses. In comparison, Hispanics last year made up 16 percent of the total U.S. population.

Sentences for felony immigration crimes, which include illegal crossing as well as other crimes such as alien smuggling, accounted for about 87 percent of the increase in the number of Hispanics sent to prison over the past decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Sentencing Commission data.

These figures echo the findings of a 2009 report by the Pew Hispanic Center which pointed out that in 1991, three times as many Latinos were sentenced in federal courts for drug crimes (60 percent) as for immigration crimes (20 percent). Yet, this all changed in 2007 when the pattern “reversed” and 48 percent were sentenced for an immigration offense and 37 percent for a drug offense.

The reason for this massive shift is an increase in expedited en masse hearings at the border which “speed” undocumented immigrants “through accelerated legal proceedings, where most guilty pleas come in Spanish and thousands of Mexican citizens end up locked up each year for entering the country without papers.” Critics — who include the late Judge John Roll — say that the process violates constitutional rights, overburdens the court system, and distract from the prosecution of major crimes.

The bloated immigration court system has created a bureaucratic mess. “When you take so many things …. inadequate resources, hostile judges, overly aggressive government lawyers, laws that don’t make sense, an immigration bar that generally is not the caliber of civil litigators, language barriers, poor translation,” explained a former immigration government lawyer, “you’ve got a system with so many broken parts, it’s a wonder it functions at all.” Some people say it doesn’t. The American Bar Association has proclaimed that “our immigration system is in crisis, overburdened and under-resourced.”

Meanwhile, Sens. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and John McCain (R-AZ) have introduced a bill that would expand the program in Arizona courts and potentially in other regions located on the Southwest border. “Everybody knows where the bulk of the illegal immigrants are coming from, and if you’re going to deal with the deterrent effect of putting some of those people who cross in prison for a while…then naturally you’re going to have a majority of those people be Hispanic,” Kyl said in defense of his position. “Let’s just stop illegal immigration and we won’t have that problem.”

To understand the scope of Chairman Smith’s bill, take the example of someone who commits a crime and serves a five-year term. If he’s a U.S. citizen, after his prison sentence, he is released into society. If he’s an immigrant, lawfully in the country or not, the U.S. can move to deport him after his five years in prison.

However, if he is a legal immigrant but from a country such as Cuba, with which the U.S. does not have diplomatic relations, he probably cannot be deported. There are a handful of countries around the world with which the U.S. has such constrained diplomatic relations that deportation is very difficult.

What this bill would do is allow the government to lock that person up indefinitely. All it would take is a written certification every six months from the Homeland Security secretary that the detainee is a risk to the community.

The bill’s critics argue that it is an unconstitutional bill that will lead to foreign nationals who pose no threat to society being detained indefinitely — and there are two Supreme Court decisions that strongly suggest they are right about the bill’s unconstitutionality. According to Antonio Ginatta of Human Rights Watch:

[A] person who completes his sentence is suddenly subject to a lifetime in detention based purely on the unilateral and unappealable decision of an administration appointee. It gives that official full authority to subject someone to incarceration well beyond the criminal sentence imposed by the judge or jury. [...] This bill gives the president imperial power over the judiciary and the legislature when it comes to locking up immigrants.

Human Rights First also notes that the bill “contains several provisions that have nothing to do with dangerousness or safety assessments or even flight risk.” In fact, it will likely lead to the indefinite incarceration of “asylum seekers fleeing religious, political and other forms of persecution and seeking protection in the United States – who do not warrant that description and whose detention is unconnected to community safety.” The organizations also claims that since 2003, “immigration authorities have spent more than $300 million of taxpayer dollars detaining thousands of asylum seekers in jails and jail-like facilities under a system that lacks basic due process safeguards.”

The prolonged detention of refugees and asylum seekers hasn’t worked out so well for Australia. Suicide is common among detained refugees in Australia, and riots erupted in April in the country’s detention centers over Australia’s prolonged mandatory detention policy.

Salvatore Colleluori over at Political Correction further argues that Smith’s bill is “an attempt to correct a statistically small problem.” In his testimony on the bill, Immigration and Customs Enforcement official Gary Mead pointed out, “Since the beginning of FY 2009, ICE has released 12,567 individual aliens. … Of this amount, 868 were re-booked into ICE custody, which is a relatively low re-detention rate of 7 percent.”

Yet, Palin noted that there is a limit when it comes to her appreciation of immigrants. Exceptions include undocumented youth who were brought to the U.S. by their parents at a young age and who want nothing more than the ability to contribute to society after going to college or enrolling in the military:

PALIN: The immigrants of the past, they had to literally and figuratively stand in line and follow rules to become U.S. citizens. I’d like to see that continue. And unfortunately, the DREAM Act kind of usurps that-the system that is a legal system to make sure that immigrants who want to be here legally, working hard, producing and supplying revenue and resources for their families, that they’re able to do that right and legally. Unfortunately, the DREAM Act doesn’t accomplish that.

Watch footage of Palin’s remarks:

Actually, the DREAM Act aims to accomplish precisely what Palin described. Under the DREAM Act bill that Republicans killed last December, applicants would have had to go through a rigorous process of background checks, in addition to paying taxes, learning English, and either serving in the military or attending college. They would have then received a “conditional nonimmigrant” status and would be required to “stand in line” for ten years before being granted legal immigrant status. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the same bill would reduce the deficit by $1.4 billion over ten years.

Palin, who has not ruled out the possibility of running for president, set forth an incoherent immigration platform in 2010. When Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly asked her what she would do about immigration if she ever became “President Palin,” she responded, “Let’s keep it simple and let’s say ‘no, if you were here illegally and if you don’t follow the steps that at some point through immigration reform we’re gonna be able to provide — and that is somehow to allow you to work — if you don’t do that, then you’re gonna be gone.’” Palin seemed to suggest that for those who follow the rules, “there has to be that expectation that they will work and that they will contribute.”

Starting July 20, state and local government entities no longer can recognize photo-ID cards issued by foreign consulates. The cards often are the sole form of photo identification for individuals living in another country who do not have a passport or a local driver’s license.

Some state lawmakers have been trying to pass the law for years as part of a larger push to keep illegal immigrants out of Arizona. They say the ID cards are too easy to fraudulently attain and give the inaccurate impression that all cardholders are in the country legally.

State Sen. Ron Gould (R), who sponsored the bill, was motivated by the concern that the Mexican government does not adequately verify the identity of individuals before issuing cards. “This is not a secure method of ID,” Gould said.

The Mexican consulate denied Gould’s claims, stating that cards are issued “solely upon a rigorous confirmation of nationality, local residence and identity.” Meanwhile, the law’s critics believe that it will only lead to more fraud and insecurity. While foreign nationals will continue to be able to use the consulate cards at private businesses, individuals will no longer be able to use them to obtain a library card or as an official means of identification during an investigation. Immigration advocates argue this will largely dissuade undocumented immigrants from reporting crimes.

Connie Andersen of the Valley Interfaith Project said, “People need a way to identify themselves in order to report crime when they are a victim or witness, and they were accustomed to using (consular) ID…This tells them they have to put that away. Some people don’t have alternative forms of ID. Now, they’re not sure what to do.”

Lawmakers have been trying to pass this law for more than 10 years. Former Gov. Janet Napolitano (D) vetoed similar bills in the past over concerns that “if immigrants can’t use consular cards, they’re likely to seek forgeries of drivers’ licenses and social security cards.” “While it is positioned by the bill’s sponsor as a quote – anti-illegal immigration measure – it’s an anti-law enforcement measure,” Napolitano reasoned in 2007.

Over 30 states accept the consulate-issued photo-ID cards for foreign nationals. Indiana, however, recently passed a law that makes it illegal to use the IDs. The ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging Indiana’s measure, stating, “This law marginalizes entire communities by criminalizing commonly accepted forms of identification. The law also undermines our most cherished constitutional safeguards by putting Indiana residents at risk of unlawful warrantless arrests without any suspicion of wrongdoing, much less criminal activity.”

President Obama broke his promise to address illegal immigration, leaving states and businesses in an untenable situation. As governor, I took aggressive steps towards better enforcement of illegal immigration, but ultimately we need a President who will be serious about fixing America’s immigration system.

Yet, perhaps Pawlenty forgot the specifics of Obama’s promise. In speech before the League of United Latin American Citizens in 2008, Obama pledged to make immigration “a top priority in my first year as President – not only because we have an obligation to secure our borders and get control of who comes in and out of our country…but because we have to finally bring undocumented immigrants out of the shadows.” He told Univision anchor Jorge Ramos that he would reintroduce comprehensive immigration reform that puts undocumented immigrants on a path to legalization and creates a workable legal immigration system.

Clearly, that never happened, and a handful of Democratic lawmakers and immigration advocates are seeking to hold Obama accountable to his promises in an effort to alleviate some of the suffering in immigrant communities. Yet, for Pawlenty to start calling Obama out for failing to push through immigration reform without also holding his own party responsible comes off as pure political pandering.

Let’s revisit some of the reasons why immigration reform has failed to be introduced over the past three years. Obama always made clear that immigration reform stood in a line with health care reform, energy legislation, and financial regulatory changes and that at least a few Republicans are needed to pass a bill. Republicans responded by dragging out and attempting to block almost every single piece of legislation that Democrats put before them. After an unnecessarily long and nasty health care debate in 2009, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — the only Republican planning on co-sponsoring an immigration bill — pulled out, saying the “well has been poisoned.” Bipartisanship on immigration fizzled, and Republicans in Congress shifted their focus to things like ramping up deportations and overturning the 14th amendment to deny the American-born children of undocumented immigrants citizenship.

It’s unclear how Pawlenty would have handled all of this differently. He has avoided articulating any firm stance on immigration, other than stating the obvious: The immigration system “we currently have is broken” and that “the system needs to be legal and reasonable and orderly and that is not what we have now.”

His party’s platform on the issue though is pretty clear. The GOP’s Pledge to America makes no mention of immigration reform. Instead, it promises to secure the border, block the DREAM Act, and endorse Arizona’s approach to illegal immigration.

The case, Chamber of Commerce of the United States v. Whiting, has often been pointed to as a predictor of how the Supreme Court might rule on a challenge to the draconian immigration law Arizona infamously passed last year, SB-1070. While many critics of SB-1070 hoped that the Supreme Court would set an important legal precedent in Whiting that would boost the case against state and local immigration laws, the decision itself doesn’t expressly appear to either advance nor significantly hinder the case against Arizona’s latest sweeping immigration law.

The main issue in Whiting was whether Arizona can enact a law that allows the state to either suspend or revoke the business licenses of state employers who knowingly or intentionally employ undocumented immigrants. Under federal immigration law, states are preempted from “imposing civil or criminal sanctions (other than through licensing and similar laws) upon those who employ…unauthorized aliens [emphasis added].”

In the majority opinion issued today, Chief Justice John Roberts upheld the Arizona law, arguing that “Arizona’s licensing law falls well within the confines of the authority Congress chose to leave to the States and therefore is not expressly preempted.” “The Chamber’s reliance on IRCA’s legislative history to bolster its textual and structural arguments is unavailing given the Court’s conclusion that Arizona’s law falls within the plain text of the savings clause,” reasoned Roberts. (In simpler terms, it falls within the parameter of the bracketed exception italicized above).

Today’s opinion affirms the decision delivered by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Whiting — the same court which upheld an injunction against SB-1070 on the basis that several of its provisions are unconstitutional. Why did the 9th Circuit rule against federal preemption in Whiting and in favor of it in U.S. v. Arizona last month?

First of all, SB-1070 is a much broader law that contains several provisions that raise far more legal issues than the one the Supreme Court addressed today. Had the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Chamber of Commerce’s arguments in Whiting, it almost certainly would have doomed Arizona’s new sweeping immigration law. But it doesn’t work the other way around. SB-1070 is significantly more aggressive in its scope and substance, touching on the role of state and local law enforcement, Fourth Amendment rights, and federal supremacy in foreign relations.

More specifically, SB-1070′s treatment of the employment of undocumented workers is substantively different. The 9th Circuit touched on this distinction in its decision to strike down SB-1070. Referencing a case similar to Whiting, the 9th Circuit explained, “the specific issues in these cases do not overlap.” Just as the Supreme Court reasoned, the 9th Circuit argued that the Legal Arizona Workers Act “fits within Congress’ intended meaning of ‘licensing’ law’ and that “the INA [Immigration Nationality Act], which makes the use of E-Verify voluntary, does not impliedly preempt Arizona from mandating that employers use the E-Verify system.”

However, SB-1070 went a step further by actually criminalizing “the solicitation, application for, or performance of work by an undocumented immigrant.” And that’s where the 9th Circuit drew the line, arguing that both federal immigration law combined with “legislative history demonstrating Congress’ affirmative choice not to criminalize work as a method of discouraging unauthorized immigrant employment, likely reflects Congress’ clear and manifest purpose to supercede state authority in this context.” There is an explicit exemption referencing business licenses in federal law that allows the Legal Arizona Workers Act to stand. But SB-1070 goes above and beyond that exemption and wanders into the territory of what is expressly preempted.

Finally, just because Arizona’s E-Verify law has been deemed constitutional does not meet it is either an effective or an efficient policy. In his dissent, Justice Breyer wrote that “either directly or through the uncertainty that it creates, the Arizona statute will impose additional burdens upon lawful employment” and could lead to “unlawful discrimination” in the workplace. Justice Sotomayor also cautioned against the creation of a patchwork of state and local immigration laws.

Yet, it turns out Arpaio’s own Sheriff’s Office is part of the problem. While Arpaio has targeted pregnant immigrant women and undocumented families, three members of his own office may have been members of an international drug and human trafficking ring. The Associated Press reports:

Three employees of America’s self-proclaimed toughest sheriff have been arrested in a drug and human trafficking case, authorities said Tuesday. Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said a deputy and two female detention officers at the sheriff’s largest jail facility were among 12 people taken into custody and accused of being in a Phoenix-based international drug smuggling ring. [...]

As part of the investigation, officers on Tuesday seized 10 pounds of heroin, nearly $200,000 in cash, weapons, vehicles and stolen property.

The story goes on to explain that detention officer Marcella Hernandez is pregnant with the child of an alleged member of the Mexican Sinaloa cartel. Deputy Ruben Navarette — who was once assigned to the sheriff’s human smuggling unit — has been charged with human smuggling, money laundering, controlling an illegal enterprise, and conspiracy. Hernandez faces felony charges. Seven other employees of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office are being investigated for their possible involvement.

The news come just as two of Arpaio’s top aides were forced to resign over misconduct, mismanagement and criminal behavior allegations. A financial review of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office records recently revealed that his office misspent at least $99.5 million over the last eight years.

Arpaio flippantly responded to today’s news, stating, “Every organization, you’re going to find some people who do wrong…It’s human nature.”

Pearce — who ordained Ready as an “elder” in the Mormon church and supported his unsuccessful City Council run — has always claimed that he had no knowledge of Ready’s controversial beliefs and affiliations. (Meanwhile, Bill Straus, regional director of the Arizona Anti-Defamation League, claims to have met with Pearce and informed him on J.T. Ready and other neo-Nazis flocking to his anti-immigrant cause). Yet, in this interview, Pearce admits to taking Ready under his wing and bringing him into his family:

FOX 10: He says to say that you were a friend would be an understatement. [...] He’s saying that you took him under your wing and he says that there’s no doubt about that.

PEARCE: I think that’s probably a fair statement initially. [...] I had great hopes for J.T. in terms of just being a good patriot. And it wasn’t until years later that he brought to light that he had associations. [...] As a young man, I put my arm around him. I cared about J.T. But I will not support those kinds of activities. [...]

I’m a natural kind of lover of guys. I’m a hugger, kind of touchy feely kind of guy. I care about people, but I will not put up with misbehavior and improper conduct. I don’t care who you are. I think he had a lot of potential. But when he associated himself with those sort of organizations — he can’t do that and be a part of our family.

In a separate interview with Fox 10, Ready went as far as to call Pearce “a surrogate father” who “enlightened him.” “I more or less evolved from there,” explained Ready. “I didn’t really heed his word on staying more covert.”

Ready also claims that he was with Pearce’s son, Josh Pearce, when he got a tattoo of an iron eagle with a swastika on his neck and chest. Ready told Fox 10 that he talked Josh Pearce out of joining a skinhead group. Josh Pearce was recently sentenced to a year in the Arizona Department of Corrections for violating the conditions of his probation on a 2007 conviction for aggravated DUI.

When asked if he believes Russell Pearce is a racist, former state legislator Bill Konopnicki (R) — who feels that he was bullied by Pearce for voting against one of his immigration bills in 2007 — stated, “My personal opinion is I hope not, but some of the things that he has said would lead one to that conclusion.”

Watch Fox 10′s report:

“Unfortunately, the state is broke and quite frankly we can’t take on this massive project by ourselves,” says the senator who sponsored the legislation. His initial goal is to raise $50 million in donations. “That would be a good, healthy start.”

If the federal government won’t finish its fence along Arizona’s roughly 370 miles of border then the state will, the Republican says. He and his allies are still trying to figure out the cost of the fence and what it might look like.The senator’s goal is to build a contiguous, solid fence “and have the entire border completely and properly secured.”

Federal estimates put the cost of building a mile of solid border fence at $3 million but Smith says the state will rely on inmate labor and donated supplies to keep costs down

Yet, there’s a reason why the federal government hasn’t finished the border wall. A 2009 GAO report found that the U.S. spent $2.4 billion since 2005 to erect the unfinished 600 miles of new fence along the US-Mexico border. It’ll cost $6.5 billion to maintain over the next 20 years and push most border crossers to more remote and dangerous areas which makes the human smuggling business even more lucrative. Meanwhile, the border wall has served more as a speed bump than a roadblock as migrants and smugglers have always found new and creative ways to get over, through, and around it.

At a Senate hearing on border security in April, El Paso County Judge Veronica Escobar warned that “vilifying immigrants, building expensive, ugly walls, and encouraging hysteria and xenophobia only hurts our border communities, our commerce and the economy of the nation.” Rather than spending money on what Escobar describes as “a rusting monument that makes my community look like a junkyard,” she is hoping for money from the Merida Initiative, comprehensive immigration reform, and better technology and equipment for the international ports of entry.

People are free to waste their money on whatever they want, but Arizona probably won’t be able to turn around and use those donations to build its own fence. The Constitution gives the federal government supreme authority “in the general field of foreign affairs, including power over immigration, naturalization and deportation.”