Having lived for short periods of time in Mexico, Paraguay, Ecuador and Uruguay where I stayed with families, I have always been warmed and heartened by the Latino culture and the special lan that comes with it. At one time, my Spanish was pretty good, and 40 years ago this summer, I was allowed to write a newspaper column seven days a week for six weeks (about 1,200 words each) for La Verdad, a daily owned by the family I lived with in a Sister Cities program with Loja, Ecuador.

I grieve, bristle and am offended by what is happening with Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaios trolling the county for people who dont have citizenship or the right documents to be here. A great, great sorrow and sadness has settled over our greater community as we witness something brutal and insidious happening. People of faith and conscience especially are both astounded and disgusted by the so-called hunt for the illegals. Those tactics, those procedures, the terror created are the makings of a Dostroyevsky novel a narrative for another country

You will never find me beating my breast about nationalism and maintaining Americas purity with harsh legalism. This earth is, after all, a huge ball of matter careening through space with human beings some of the creatures clinging to the fragile firmament. People have to be somewhere. People have a natural, God-given drive to survive. Grown-ups have an obligation to provide for the welfare of their families. Many humans have free access to go most places on earth only because of the good fortune of their places of birth, their economic fortunes and the clout of the place they live. Forced into a grim situation of survival, they, too, would move toward the light.

So I salute the statement released Thursday by seight prominent Valley clergy all but one of whom I have interviewed for articles over the years. They are a formidable group and they represent religions and faiths that have a deep and long history of pointing out injustice with courage and force. They are nonplussed that the community is so silent at what is happening with the crackdown and arrests and harassment of people because of nationality and skin color.

Impelled by our faith and religious values, we respectfully urge Sheriff Arpaio to reconsider the wisdom and morality of the so-called Maricopa County Sheriffs Office crime sweeps, they said in the opening to the statement released to media. We call on the sheriff to cease this excessive, wasteful and divisive campaign.

Signers were Bishop Kirk Stephen Smith of the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona; Bishop Stephen Talmage of the Grand Canyon Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church; Bishop Minerva Cacano of the Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church; the Rev. Kenneth Moe, moderator of the Presbytery of Grand Canyon; The Rev. Jan Olav Flaaten, director of the Arizona Ecumenical Council; Rabbi Andrew Straus of Tempe, chairman of Board of Rabbis of Greater Phoenix; Rabbi Maynard Bell, executive director the Phoenix Chapter of the American Jewish Committee; and the Rev. Lark Hapke, interim conference minister for the Southwest Conference of the United Church of Christ.

Bell told me that the sweeps may technically be legal, but is everyone aware that it has human impact? He related a conversation with a principal of a Paradise Valley elementary school near 32^nd Street and Greenway Road.On the first day after the sweep, 100 kids did not go to school, he said. People are very, very frightened. The Latino community, I think, is kind of aghast that nobody in the non-Latino establishment talks about it, other than the mayor (Phil Gordon) of Phoenix.

And he rightly noted that moderate politicians wont speak out because the sheriff scares them politically and they think most Arizonans are in favor of it (the crackdowns).

The clergys statements suggested a police state atmosphere has been created, as Arpaios forces move from city to city like an uncaring bulldozer.

Here is the full text of the statement, largely crafted by
Bell, with input from the other signers:

Impelled by our faith and religious values, we respectfully urge Sheriff Arpaio to reconsider the wisdom and morality of the MCSO crime sweeps. We call on the Sheriff to cease this excessive, wasteful, and divisive campaign.

Even if the Sheriff has legal authority to order these sweeps, we question his judgment in orchestrating them, the message that they send to our community, and the fear and anger that they generate in the targeted neighborhoods. These sweeps have evoked a police state atmosphere, involved detainment on the basis of a racial profile, and dehumanization of innocent people many of whom are legal residents of the United States. They have also generated anger and anxiety in an ethnic community that comprises more than one third of the population of Maricopa County. We are unconvinced that the law enforcement value of these sweeps outweighs the human rights and dignity of those who reside in the neighborhoods where they are carried out and the peace of our community.

We are also disturbed and surprised that there has not been more public outcry from non-Latinos about the Sheriffs conduct and the hateful and anti-immigrant rhetoric that it exacerbates. Regardless of ones position on the issue of immigration policy, we call upon those on both sides of the debate, especially other high profile figures in our community who influence public opinion to speak out against mean-spirited words and actions directed at the migrants and foreign-born residents among us. We call upon the higher instincts and motivations of our community to see the human face of these children of God who are the targets of these sweeps.

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