Amid growing concern over political violence, Latino community leaders and Republican officials alike await a federal judge’s orders on tightening security at community meetings tied to a longstanding racial-profiling case and ongoing oversight of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.
If U.S. District Court Judge G. Murray Snow implements safety measures he discussed at a Sept. 12 hearing, the new format would mark the first time meetings are held in a federal courthouse and guided by questions community members submit in advance.
Prompting Snow’s sweeping proposal are reports of threats, disruption and armed attendees at a July community meeting in Phoenix that left Latino residents and plaintiffs — at the center of the nearly 20-year-old racial profiling case against the sheriff’s office — deeply concerned. The judge’s calls for tighter security also coincided with the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk just two days earlier at a Turning Point USA event in Utah.
“I’m concerned. I wasn’t at the community meeting, but I read the newspaper articles about it,” Snow said, adding that the court monitor overseeing the case called to tell him not to attend the meeting. “He heard that there were armed individuals and it looked like it was going to be a rather difficult meeting. And it’s my understanding, and I don’t know if anybody wants to contest it, that it was a very difficult meeting.”
“Certainly, events of the last few days do not suggest a whole lot of confidence in just having open meetings anymore on topics that may be very, very difficult for some people,” he continued from the bench at the Sandra Day O’Connor U.S. Courthouse in Phoenix. “And yet, I do think that the meetings are a necessary element.”
Still, some Latino advocates have raised questions about whether the new format will discourage community members who fear immigration arrests or deportations if meetings are held in a federal courthouse. They’re also concerned about moving the public meetings — aimed at rebuilding trust with Latino communities — out of local neighborhoods, where people could speak directly to the court monitor, community advisory board and MCSO officials.
An official meeting date will be set after Snow issues his orders, Raul Piña, a longtime member of the court-appointed Community Advisory Board, told Arizona Luminaria. He added that the board has ideas about how to collect community questions, but is also waiting for the court’s official order before formalizing that process.
The board’s duties include helping rebuild trust between the county’s Latino communities and MCSO, relaying residents’ concerns to the monitor for investigation or action, issuing recommendations, as well as gathering and reporting MCSO practices that may violate court orders.
‘A horrible display of the racism’
The Melendres v. Arpaio litigation was first filed in 2007 on behalf of Latino residents who accused the sheriff’s office — then led by Joe Arpaio — of racial profiling and unlawful traffic stops. Snow has overseen the case since 2009.
In 2013, Snow ruled the law enforcement agency had violated the Fourth and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution by targeting Latinos for traffic stops and detaining Latinos without legal justification. He issued a permanent injunction that required extensive reforms within the sheriff’s office, including policy changes, body-worn cameras and the appointment of a court monitor to ensure MCSO complied with court orders.
The Community Advisory Board was also established, along with quarterly public meetings to provide updates and gather input from Latino community members whose rights were violated. It was one of these meetings in July that devolved into chaos after the Desert West Community Center in Maryvale was flooded by pro-sheriff activists, seemingly encouraged to attend by Republican county officials upset about the costs of court oversight.
“There was a large turnout of what appeared to be an organized effort of supporters for the sheriff’s office to be there,” Roberto Reveles, founding president of Somos America — one of the original plaintiffs in the case against the sheriff’s office — told Arizona Luminaria. “They expressed horrible racist remarks, according to the press, ‘Go back to Mexico,’ and ‘Why are you not speaking English?’”
Reveles said he’s attended all but the July community meeting and had never witnessed the kind of hostility he later learned occurred.
“It was a horrible display of the racism that’s at the core of the culture that this order is intended to reform,” he said. “It visibly underscored that the task of the court is far from being complete, even though the number of cases of backlog are being resolved.”
County officials have projected that by the end of fiscal year 2025, the ongoing litigation and compliance efforts will have cost taxpayers more than $300 million since 2008, according to a Maricopa County financial summary obtained by Arizona Luminaria. During the September hearing, Snow referenced the alleged costs the county claims are associated with the case and oversight, saying he previously questioned the figures.
“I thought maybe those (costs) were overstated,” he said.
Snow said that while the sheriff’s office has reached compliance in the “low 90s” percentile range, the remaining areas of noncompliance are significant. The judge also questioned the way changes were being measured, suggesting that traffic stop metrics alone don’t reflect whether systemic reforms are actually reaching affected communities.
Snow welcomed public officials critical of the ongoing litigation to attend and participate in future community meetings.
Community meetings may move to federal courthouse
Snow cited maintaining order, safety and meaningful dialogue as reasons for moving all future community meetings to a special proceedings courtroom at the Phoenix federal courthouse. The meetings would remain open to the public but attendees would be subject to a security screening and the U.S. Marshals Service would provide additional protection. Snow also offered to preside over the meetings.
Additionally, the Community Advisory Board would be tasked with gathering questions from the public ahead of the meetings, where they would later be presented and used to steer the conversation.
Prior community meetings were held at rotating locations throughout metro Phoenix and were primarily attended by plaintiffs and members of the Latino community, Reveles said. Attendees also were allowed to respond to what they heard or raise concerns freely, he said.
While Reveles told Arizona Luminaria he supported Snow’s proposal, he also hopes there is room to preserve the open format of prior meetings, which allowed for real-time public input from the community. He urged Snow to provide the community assurances that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents wouldn’t be stationed outside the courthouse, noting that ongoing fears of arrests could deter people from attending.
ICE has recently conducted arrests inside the Phoenix immigration court at 7th Avenue and Van Buren, just blocks from the federal courthouse. After pushback from advocates, however, agents appeared to shift tactics by first monitoring immigration hearings and then making their arrests during traffic stops just down the road, according to the Arizona Mirror.
At the September hearing, Snow acknowledged that the location could discourage participation from vulnerable immigrant communities, citing “recent arrests” as potential factors. But he reiterated the advisory board’s responsibility to collect a broad range of questions that closely reflected the community’s concerns.
Joe Popolizio, an attorney for the sheriff’s office, supported the proposed changes, saying that many people were disruptive at the July meeting and that conversations often veered to unrelated topics.
“I understand that there was abusive behavior on both sides. I’m not going to sit here and say that it was only one side,” he said.
Snow countered that increasing security would help everyone feel safer.
“I accept completely what you said, that both sides were involved in abusive behavior. But how can the Latino community in Maricopa County feel like they have any kind of assurance of equal treatment when we have threats being made at meetings like that?” he said. “I can understand intimidation. So I want to remove that, and I want to remove it to the extent the Sheriff is in any danger, too, which certainly Sheriff’s officers can be.”
Popolizio proposed the first hour to 90 minutes of each meeting focus strictly on issues related to the litigation. Other issues related to the sheriff’s office could be addressed at the tail end of the meeting, if Sheriff Jerry Sheridan wished to address them, he added.
Balancing safety with public input from Latinos
Multiple stakeholders at the hearing expressed support for Snow’s proposal, characterizing the July community meeting as a boiling point for instability and fear.
“I think it makes sense,” Piña told Snow at the hearing, adding that the last community meeting spurred feelings of not being safe.
“I think the Community Advisory Board is up to the task of gathering questions, meeting with groups in advance, gathering questions, synthesizing questions if that helps and then presenting them at this forum,” he continued. “I think that would work.”
Former Phoenix City Council member Michael Nowakowski was appointed by the sheriff’s office to the board in April. He told Arizona Luminaria that the recent raucous meeting underscored the need for structure, safety and clearer ground rules.
He described the July meeting as “crazy,” with attendees shouting over one another and ignoring the purpose of the gathering. He agreed the meetings should still allow people a chance to freely raise their concerns, even ones that fall outside the scope of the litigation, such as jail conditions and immigration, he said.
“I think that sitting everyone together, having a conversation, finding that common ground and growing from that… that’s what needs to happen,” Nowakowski said. “Not just here, but within the whole community.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly spelled Raul Piña’s last name, and included an incorrect date related to the fatal shooting of Kirk.
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