ICE’s heavy-handed immigration enforcement was tried once before – by Arizona’s notorious sheriff Joe Arpaio in the early 2000s

Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio implemented his own immigration detention program from 2006 to 2017, instructing deputies to detain anyone without valid identification and who did not speak English. A federal district court ruled in 2015 that Arpaio and his deputies relied on racial profiling to target Latinos, with one U.S. Department of Justice attorney characterizing his actions as overseeing "the worst pattern of racial profiling by a law enforcement agency in U.S. history." Arpaio also established Tent City in August 1993, a facility that housed up to 1,700 inmates in surplus army tents and, after 2009, was used for housing detained immigrants. The facility, which cost taxpayers US$8.5 million annually by 2017, was known for inhumane conditions, including expired food and temperatures reaching 130 degrees Fahrenheit. A historian of U.S. immigration believes Arpaio’s methods are echoed in current hardline immigration policies devised by presidential aide Stephen Miller, with ICE facilities like Camp East Montana now holding 5,000 detainees and drawing complaints of squalid conditions.