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People give way to much credit to Joe Arpaio. Most of what he has done is really attributable to Andrew Thomas.

First, in 2006, when the legislature passed the new law on human smuggling, Thomas interpreted that law to include a conspiracy to smuggle humans. In that case if an illegal paid a coyote money to smuggle him into the country, then the illegal had entered into a conspiracy with the coyote and could be prosecuted for human smuggling.

And this interpretation by Andrew Thomas has been one of Arpaio's main tool in going after the illegals. But that is the law only in Maricopa County as none of the other county attorneys in the state made that interpretation.

The second was the Legal Arizona Workers Act, aka the employer sanctions law, to prosecute those employers who hired illegals without checking them against e-verify.

Enforcement money on that comes from the state to the county attorneys and the the county attorney dispenses the money as he sees fit. Thomas was giving bucketloads of money to Arpaio to run the high profile raids on businesses suspected of hiring illegals, often based only on anonymous tips.

All that went on for a long time leading to all the animosity between the board of supervisors and Thomas/Arpaio.

So then Thomas resigns to run for AG, and the board appoints Romley as interim County Attorney, who is also running to be elected as the next County Attorney.

But now Romley has his hands on all the info from Thomas' office.

So he is releasing that info in way to help his campaign.

First he released the info that showed that of all the convictions for human smuggling, only 4% had been actual human smugglers and 96% had been illegals who paid a coyote. And he publicly stated that if Arpaio would bring him a human smuggler, he would prosecute but he wouldn't be prosecuting any more illegals for conspiracy.

Next, Romley released the fact that Thomas had given Arpaio 3 million of state money to run the workplace raids, and that resulted in only one conviction of an employer for hiring illegals. And that he wouldn't be giving Arpaio any mote money. If Arpaio wants to raid employers, he would have to pay for it out of his budget.

Needless to say, Arpaio is backing Bill Montgomery for County Attorney.