Obama administration suing an outspoken Arizona sheriff

The United States Justice Department is filing an "unprecedented" lawsuit against Joe Arpaio, the controversial sheriff of Arizona's Maricopa County.

In announcing the legal action Thursday, a Justice Department official said that Sheriff Arpaio is refusing to cooperate with a federal investigation into allegations of discrimination and illegal searches and seizures by the department.

The Justice Department said it has been seeking documents relating to its civil-rights probe for 15 months and turned to a lawsuit only as a last resort, adding that this was the first time in 30 years that a police department had not cooperated with a civil-rights investigation.

Arpaio and the Obama administration have repeatedly clashed over immigration policy.

A longtime lawman with a penchant for theatrics, Arpaio has been a central figure in the federal government’s practice of enlisting local and state police to enforce certain aspects of immigration law – a program called 287(g).

The program is seen as one of the inspirations for SB 1070, the controversial Arizona immigration law that was signed into law this year but which is now tied up in a court battle. As such, both 287(g) and Arpaio – its most zealous practitioner – have become lightning rods.

A $1 million bounty?Arpaio’s crackdowns on illegal immigrants are well known on both sides of the US-Mexico border, to the point that his office says he has been sent a death threat by a Mexican drug cartel recently, although the origin of the $1 million bounty on the sheriff’s head is unconfirmed.

It isn’t the first time Arpaio is threatened. “He’s a controversial figure, he’s an outspoken person,” says sheriff's spokeswoman Lisa Allen.