PHOENIX — A Wyoming man has given more than $1.5 million to help defend Arizona’s controversial immigration enforcement measure in court, Gov. Jan Brewer’s office said Thursday.

The contribution from Timothy Mellon of Saratoga is the largest to Brewer’s defense fund, which has amassed more than $3.6 million from 41,000 donors nationwide. Mellon could not immediately be reached for comment.

The latest legal bills released Thursday show Brewer’s office has spent more than $440,000 for the first two months of defending the law.

The bills, obtained through a public records request by The Associated Press, are for work performed through June by Phoenix law firm Snell & Wilmer. They do not cover July hearings in federal court before a judge Susan Bolton temporarily blocked enforcement of the law’s most controversial provisions.

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The MSM is all abuzz with headlines blazing: Feds sue Arizona sheriff in civil rights probe.

As Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio gets vilified in the press, take a deep breath and remind yourself that this career lawman held top management positions throughout the world — infiltrating drug organizations on behalf of the government — and capping his 32-year federal career as head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for Arizona before being elected to administer the nation‘s third largest sheriff’s office in 1993.

Arpaio didn’t just fall of the turnip truck, as the saying goes. Neither is he easily intimidated.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s official statement regarding the federal lawsuit against his office by the U.S. Department of Justice for his alleged refusal to turn over documents is followed by a statement from his Washington, D.C. attorney, Robert Driscoll. Both can be read here.

Michelle Malkin’s conservative blog also carries a piece on the topic written by Doug Powers.

Hat tip: Seeing Red AZ

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Thursday the Justice Department “sandbagged” him with the lawsuit it filed earlier in the day against him.

The State Department included a Justice Department lawsuit against Arizona’s immigration law into a United Nations human rights report to show how U.S. rule of law can be an example to the world, a State Department spokesman said Monday.

Spokesman P.J. Crowley said the Arizona immigration law included in an Aug. 20 report to the U.N. high commissioner on rights came up during the preparation period, when teams went around the country gathering ideas for the report.

Crowley said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton included the dispute in the report because she thought the U.S. could serve as “a model” to other nations.

“The universal periodic review, we believe, can be a model to demonstrate, you know, to other countries, even other countries on the Human Rights Council, this is how you engage civil society,’ Crowley told reporters.

“And the Arizona immigration law is a good example of how we are debating this as a society. There is a legal case ongoing. And this issue will be resolved under the rule of law,” he said.

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The U.S. Border Patrol told the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office that one of its agents working in the Nogales area was shot at from the Mexican side of the international boundary early Monday morning.

Dispatch received the call at 4:23 a.m., said Lupita Perez of the Sheriff’s Office. She said the Border Patrol contacted her office “out of courtesy,” and that the actual incident occurred around 2 a.m. on the Buena Vista Ranch near Kino Springs.

“It was approximately five gun shots coming from Mexico towards his direction,” said Perez, who added that the agent said he could hear the bullets whizzing past him. She said the shots came from a vehicle. “Nobody was hurt and no property was damaged.”

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Former Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate and millionaire businessman Buz Mills is taking on a new challenge.

He’s focusing his fundraising efforts on helping two Arizona sheriffs defend themselves against lawsuits challenging Arizona’s controversial immigration law.

Mills is chairing the Border Sheriffs, a new non-profit organization set up to raise private funds to cover the legal fees of Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever and Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, two of the state’s 15 county sheriffs named in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil-rights groups.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio also is named as a defendant in a separate lawsuit filed by the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders, but he is not part of the Border Sheriffs group. None of the other four Senate Bill 1070 lawsuits name any sheriffs as defendants.

Mills said the goal of the Border Sheriffs is not to defend SB 1070, which he supports as a tool for law enforcement, but to help the sheriffs on the front lines. Cochise County shares about 80 miles of border with Mexico, and Pinal County is a major corridor of travel for illegal immigrants and drug smugglers.

“Helping them raise funds lets them focus on their main job: protecting Arizonans against this international violence,” Mills said.

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Yesterday’s detonation of two car bombs in Mexico came just days after the bodies of 72 illegal aliens — mostly from Central America — were found at a ranch about 100 miles from Ciudad Victoria.

This ranks as the worst massacre since Mexican President Calderon sent 45,000 troops and thousands of federal police to fight drug cartels in late 2006.

The bomb attacks occurred the same day officials discovered the body of a police officer investigating the massacre. Mexican mayors are routinely gunned down and one, fearful for himself and his family, sought refuge in El Paso Texas. The military is corrupt and police are savagely killed by drug lords.

Reuters reports that at least 30 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2006. The country is among the world’s most dangerous for reporters — and, it seems, anyone else. More than 28,000 people have died in drug related violence during that same time.

As the violence escalates and illegals are increasingly entering the United States by sea in violation of our law, we become ever more vulnerable. Despite these facts, the Obama administration is imposing new and more lenient policies upon Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

ICE assistant secretary John Morton, an underling of Janet Napolitano’s, has instructed the agency’s legal office to stop the deportation proceedings of foreign nationals — “without criminal convictions” – who may now be eligible for a green card. Judges will be advised to dismiss pending cases.

How long before we will be flooded with “political refugees” from Mexico being welcomed as new Democrats for Obama?

Hat tip:  Seeing Red AZ

In a press release titled Governor Brewer condemns US State Department Report to UN Council on Human Rights, our Governor is taking on the whole world. Well, not the whole world just the United Nations and our own State Department, and the Obama Administration (again).

PHOENIX – In correspondence sent today to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Governor Jan Brewer has condemned the “Universal Periodic Review” report submitted to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Governor Brewer has requested that Secretary Clinton amend the report to the United Nations to remove the paragraph on S.B. 1070.

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ICE: Provides “relief from removal” to non-criminal illegals

Mexican drug cartels — recruiting in the valley? It’s true. Law enforcement officials say they’re finding new hires in local bars.

Arizona’s high unemployment rate and proximity to the border is making the state a fertile recruiting ground for drug and human smuggling cartels. And investigators say these dangerous gangs are doing their hiring in valley bars, looking for people desperate for money and employment.

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