The federal government, under our newer, weaker president, is looking to limit the amount of immigration enforcement that can be done in Arizona. Sheriff Joe Arpaio is famous for his staunch position on illegal immigration and his investigations into illegal drug smuggling rings. He’s especially hated over Tent City and his reinstitution of (volunteer) chain gangs — and of course, there’s the world famous pink underwear.

Now, all of this toughness might make Obama jealous, because he’s been trying to limit what Sheriff Joe can do. Unfortunately, I don’t think the federal government quite understands who they’re dealing with.

An Arizona sheriff known for cracking down on people who are in the country illegally launched a crime and immigration sweep in northwestern metro Phoenix on Friday, a half day after officials in Washington limited his powers to make federal immigration arrests.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose sweeps have led to allegations of racial profiling, said the rebuff from Washington won’t stop him. He said he can still arrest immigrants under a state smuggling law and a federal law that gives all local police agencies more limited power to detain suspected illegal immigrants.

“It doesn’t bother me, because we are going to do the same thing,” said Arpaio, whose deputies had arrested 16 people by Friday evening on unspecified charges. “I am the elected sheriff. I don’t take orders from the federal government.”

… Kris Kobach, a law professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City and an advocate of expanding local immigration efforts, said Arpaio’s office – like every other local police agency – can detain people suspected of immigration violations for a day or two until federal authorities come to pick them up.

In the past, Arpaio could have held such immigrants for longer than two days and conducted investigations of smuggling rings, Kobach said.

“It’s really a slight narrowing, but it’s not much,” said Kobach, who worked as an immigration law adviser to then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft from 2001-2003.

… Arpaio said the Bush administration had no complaints about his use of the special federal powers, but all that has changed with the Obama administration.

“What’s changed?” Arpaio asked. “Politics has changed, because they don’t like us going on the streets to catch illegals.”

It’s pretty sad — Obama is so pitiful on immigration enforcement that he has people pining for George Bush. And while Bush certainly did plenty of good things will in office, it would be a huge understatement to say he was a disappointment on illegal immigration.

And it would be President Obama who seeks to limit the power of the states to govern themselves, not that many states haven’t completely ceded to the federal government. But it is still a constitutional right for the states to govern themselves without the interference of the federal government. But our constitutional scholar president must have missed that in his constitutional studies, huh?

Hat Tip: Riehl World View