Writing in Slate today, former Arizona Republic reporter Tom Zoellner suggests the tough part, at least, is accurate, judging by Napolitano’s relationship with Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio (Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office)

Perhaps the most notorious figure in Arizona politics, Arpaio is known for such stunts as conducting ICE-style raids on local businesses, operating chain gangs, housing prisoners in a “tent city,” and, most recently, raiding Mesa’s city hall in search of illegal immigrants. He is also known for the harsh conditions in his county jail, for which has been repeatedly sued.

Napolitano has been “was in a position to help curb Arpaio’s excesses,” Zoellner says:

As a U.S. attorney in 1995, she was put in charge of a Justice Department investigation into atrocious conditions in Arpaio’s “tent city.” Napolitano carried out her task with what can best be described as reluctance, going out of her way to protect Arpaio from flak almost before the probe had started. “We’re doing this with the complete cooperation of the sheriff,” she told the Associated Press. “We run a strict jail but a safe jail, and I haven’t heard from anyone who thinks that this is a bad thing.”

Napolitano did little to check Arpaio as governor either, though that is easy to explain: he supported her 2002 bid for the office, even appearing in a campaign ad. Arpaio is one of Arizona’s most popular politicians, and this is a very conservative state, so courting the Republican sheriff was a politically necessity for a Democratic gubernatorial candidate and governor.

Political necessities aside, Napolitano did veto a bill earlier this year that would have required local law enforcement to act as border agents, a role that Arpaio is already acting out. In general, she has been a moderate voice on immigration, if not on law enforcement. But the association with Arpaio will likely come up at Napolitano’s confirmation hearings. Arpaio, a genius of self-promotion, will likely be pleased.

Under a new, more liberal administration, ICE will presumably tone down the raids, and the website for the presidential transition says as much:

Immigration raids are ineffective: Despite a sevenfold increase in recent years, immigration raids only netted 3,600 arrests in 2006 and have placed all the burdens of a broken system onto immigrant families.

The future administration’s platform also calls for a comprehensive reform plan similar to the one backed by President Bush, which failed in Congress because of the controversial “amnesty” plank.

The country will be living with continued economic problems for some time, and it is still unclear whether immigration will fade to the background or become a scapegoat for lost jobs. But the government will probably not tackle comprehensive immigration reform before it deals with the economy, which means that enforcing current laws will still be ICE’s focus.

Given his background, Barack Obama is probably conscious of the value that immigrants bring to the United States. He is also probably aware that the American climate since the September 11 attacks has not been friendly to immigrants, and that this hurts our image in the world. In a Washington Post op-ed, Council on Foreign Relations fellow Edward Alden notes that Canada, Australia and Japan are attracting more international students, even as the U.S. attracts fewer. Alden suggests that “putting out the welcome mat” be one of the Obama administration’s top priorities.

The first sign we have of what ICE would look like under Obama is that Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano is said to be his pick for Secretary of Homeland Security.

Arizona’s legislature has passed some of the harshest immigration laws in the country, and the state seems obsessed with protecting its 376-mile border. Napolitano is clearly more moderate than many in her state.

The Los Angeles Times reviewed her record, which showed that while she signed the 2007 employer sanctions bill reluctantly, she vetoed bills that would have required the police to enforce immigration laws and denied in-state tuition to undocumented college students. She opposed the border fence as ineffective, but she also called for the National Guard to be stationed at the border and for employers to be held accountable for hiring illegal workers.

The Napolitano selection suggests that immigration law enforcement will be a priority in the Obama administration. It also shows that the president-elect is looking for someone who knows the issue and will look at it from a middle ground. Given the political peril of dealing with immigration, a cool, moderate head would be a good thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5QVDMdW4rw

As the Democratic National Convention continues in Denver, Democrats are working on a strategy to capture the votes of Latinos, one of this year’s most important electoral demographics. Simon Rosenberg, founder of the New Democrat Network (NDN), noted in a 2007 op-ed that

the American people have changed a great deal. In recent decades, America has become increasingly suburban and exurban, Southern and Western, Hispanic and Asian, immigrant and Spanish-speaking….

With these changes in mind, Rosenberg and other party insiders are not underestimating the importance of the Latino vote in November, not only in the presidential race, but also in Congressional races (see this News 21 report on Latino voters in South Florida). On Monday of this week, the NDN hosted a forum called “Immigration Reform and the Next Administration.” At the forum were Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who has worked for pro-immigrant legislation, Marco Lopez, a senior advisor to Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano on immigration issues, and Janet Murguia, president of the National Council of La Raza, among others.

While Republican nominee John McCain is telling Spanish radio listeners that he stood up for immigration reform, Democrats say that the GOP failed to provide comprehensive immigration reform, and they point to widespread anti-immigration fervor in the GOP’s conservative wing. By promising immigrant-friendly immigration reform, the Dems hops to solidify their hold on the Latino vote.

The veto comes on the heels of the decision by lawmakers in Prince William County, Va., to stop offering some services to undocumented immigrants and to require police to check the immigration status of crime suspects (see our blog post of May 2). The Washington Post reported Monday that Prince William’s County’s new rules have pushed out undocumented immigrants, who fled to nearby counties.

In Arizona’s Maricopa County, Sheriff Joe Arpaio has already trained 160 officers, the biggest in the country, to target Latino neighborhoods (see our blog post of March 18). Despite Arpaio’s immigration sweeps, 63 percent of county voters said the sheriff is doing an excellent job or a good job, as reported in The Arizona Republic.

While Napolitano stood against the views of some Arizona residents, a Wednesday editorial in The New York Times applauded the governor’s stance as an act of reason at a time when immigration raids and curtailing services have been seen as solutions for many. “She is standing up for what is right for her state and for what is right,” The Times editorial said. “The search for a rational immigration system will not be resolved by simplistic, predatory enforcement schemes.”