Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos is under pressure on a lot of fronts right now. From his handling of the lackluster investigation into the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie to withholding disciplinary measures in his past on his resume, the headlines keep getting worse for the embattled sheriff.
Just a few weeks ago, the Pima County deputies’ union held a no confidence vote in him. About half of members said they want him to resign.
And now, the ACLU of Arizona is suing the Pima County Sheriff’s Office for records related to its dealings with federal immigration authorities.
Nanos has said his department does not work with immigration enforcement. But some records the ACLU has already received show instances in which Pima sheriff’s deputies seem to be alerting them. They would make a traffic stop, for example and then Border Patrol agents would arrive on the same scene.
John Mitchell, immigrants’ rights attorney for the ACLU of Arizona, said up until the spring of last year, the department had a policy of tracking records like this. But then they seem to have abruptly stopped doing it. The Show spoke with him more about the case — and the context in which it’s happening.
Full conversation
JOHN MITCHELL: As far as we knew at the time, these were isolated incidents, but we did go into the publicly posted policies of the Pima County Sheriff's Department and saw that there was a policy requirement to track communications between the deputies and what they call federal immigration authorities.
LAUREN GILGER: Right.
JOHN MITCHELL: We later learned that they just interpreted federal immigration authorities to mean Border Patrol. To our knowledge, we don't have any records of them tracking communications with ICE, but we did uncover a set of records that indicate when and for what purpose Pima County sheriff's deputies will call Border Patrol, and those records stopped somewhat abruptly in 2024 despite the policy continuing up until the point at which we had requested the records.
Very shortly, I'd say just about a week after we sent our records request, the Pima County Sheriff's Department quietly changed their policy to no longer require this tracking. So that sort of pricked our ears a bit. We continued with what now has been an ongoing litigation.
LAUREN GILGER: OK, so you're suing for the release of those documents in light of that change that seems to have happened. You've already obtained some documents from PCSO related to incidents that seem to have resulted in some interaction with federal immigration authorities. You said not particularly with ICE, but with Border Patrol. What did those records show? It looks like there are some cases in which you see sheriff's officers call Border Patrol?
JOHN MITCHELL: Yes, absolutely. That's not in question. In general, it's hard to categorize or say overarching findings about such a broad number of records, a large number of records over such a broad time frame. Of course, you know, there's — you can't say that every single instance is constitutionally problematic or potentially unlawful. Of course, there are just thousands upon thousands of interactions and reports and data points.
So we are trying to sort of narrow down what we see as the most concerning interactions between Pima County sheriff's deputies and federal immigration authorities. As of now, you know, we've gotten some incident reports, and it's important to keep in mind that incident reports are by nature one-sided accounts. They're written by the deputy who's involved. They are subjective in that sense, so we take them with a grain of salt there, but what we have seen about the interactions between sheriff's deputies and Border Patrol is that in some instances they appear to violate constitutional bounds of keeping somebody in a law enforcement encounter for the purpose of having Border Patrol come in and investigate their immigration status.
Of course, we can't say what the constitutionality is of a given encounter without trying to understand the fuller picture. This is records litigation, right? It's not about the constitutionality of these stops, but it is a pattern.
LAUREN GILGER: Right. It's what's available to the public, yeah.
JOHN MITCHELL: Exactly.
LAUREN GILGER: So, so let me ask you about why now, right? Like as you're digging up these records, this obviously comes at a moment in which we're seeing, you know, increased immigration enforcement around the country from the Trump administration. We're seeing a real ramping up of agreements between local law enforcement agencies and federal immigration authorities. These 287(g) agreements have really exploded in the last year or so.
The Pima County Sheriff's Office does not have that kind of agreement. The sheriff, Chris Nanos, has said, you know, "We do not enforce immigration law. We're not interested in your immigration status." I wonder why now in terms of the ACLU looking into these kinds of incidents and patterns?
JOHN MITCHELL: Yeah, well, that's chief concern for us is to ensure that in a broader sense public officials are held accountable to their constituents. When a sheriff touts their agency's commitment to non-cooperation, you know, in one isolated sense it means they don't enforce immigration law, right? They can't arrest someone for a suspected lack of status. But in our view it also means they would not call Border Patrol just because they're unsure of someone's immigration status. And certainly that they would not call Border Patrol to the scene of — I think in one incident report just a description of people who are not of the United States without any further context.
So the incident reports we got in this litigation are quite concerning in that sense to see that not only do the sheriff's deputies appear to have called Border Patrol in situations where they did not need to, but they also called Border Patrol to essentially in situations that were somewhat ambiguous at the time.
LAUREN GILGER: So I mean the underlying concern there, right, is one that we've heard from many local law enforcement officers, which is that they want to make sure people, especially in this immigration environment, are not afraid to call 911, which is something we've seen in Arizona in the past under former Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
JOHN MITCHELL: Absolutely. Yeah, and that's, that's a concern that I've heard echoed through numerous community organizations, from community members themselves, is that it's, it's extremely concerning for residents of Pima County to not be able to trust that they can call 911 in a situation that might need law enforcement, you know, a situation life or death or serious injury, something that requires law enforcement intervention and the estimation of the person who's calling, but simultaneously having that concern about whether those law enforcement officials have a sort of separate agenda or separate mandate that they're going to be investigating at the same time.
LAUREN GILGER: Lots to watch for. John Mitchell, immigrants rights attorney for the ACLU of Arizona, joining us. John, thank you for coming on, appreciate you taking the time.
JOHN MITCHELL: Thank you so much for having me.
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The city of Phoenix has launched a multilingual platform where residents can report concerns or incidents related to federal law enforcement activity within the city. The Federal Enforcement Complaint Reporting Portal is available at the Community Transparency Initiative webpage.
