Records released by the ACLU of Arizona detail calls between Pima County Sheriff’s Department deputies and the Border Patrol.
That follows a Pima County Superior Court ruling in July that compelled the sheriff’s department to turn the records over.
This is the latest ruling in a long-running legal challenge mounted by the ACLU AZ to find out the extent in which Pima County deputies work with ICE and Border Patrol.
Sheriff Chris Nanos has said his department does not work with immigration enforcement, and the department no longer has a policy to keep those records in place.
But the ACLU AZ’s initial lawsuit turned over a trove of documents showing interactions between the two agencies going up to 2024. The group filed an additional brief with the court earlier this year to receive more recent records.
The ACLU says it received more than 1,800 “unsorted incident reports” that contained "Border Patrol" or other terms, and distilled those into documents showing more than 80 different times deputies made contact with the immigration agency during traffic stops or other interactions.
The documents depict a range of incidents, from drug busts and domestic violence calls, to suspicious person calls that don't result in an arrest.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department said Nanos was not available Friday for comment on the lawsuit, documents or the department's policy on contacting immigration agencies.
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