The new sheriff of metro Phoenix is adamant that his agency's days of taking the lead in immigration enforcement are over.
Sheriff Paul Penzone told the Arizona Capitol Times that -- unlike his predecessor Joe Arpaio -- his office won't conduct business raids in search of immigrant workers.
Penzone said his office isn't an immigration enforcement agency, but will call in federal authorities for situations in which his officers encounter immigrants who are believed to be in the country illegally but haven't committed other violations.
"We don't have the powers that we had in the past to enforce those things," Penzone told the newspaper. "We are merely a conduit."
He launched 80 business raids that led to the arrests of 800 workers, most of whom were immigrants, on charges of using fraudulent IDs to get jobs. Arpaio also conducted 20 traffic patrols across metro Phoenix that sought out immigrants.
While immigration enforcement made Arpaio popular with some voters, the federal government and courts eventually took his powers to confront immigration. A federal judge found in 2013 that officers from Arpaio's office had racially profiled Latinos in the traffic patrols.
In 2016, Arpaio was charged with criminal contempt after he acknowledged conducting immigration patrols 17 months after the judge ordered them stopped.
Two weeks after he was charged, Arpaio lost his re-election bid to Penzone, a retired Phoenix police sergeant.
President Donald Trump is seeking to revive a long-standing program that deputizes local officers to enforce federal immigration law.
