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Comment by btkramer9 | Hacker News Reader

This is grossly out of proportion with reality. I've lived in Arizona my entire life with a diverse group of friends and colleagues. Practically no one, except for those that are illegal, worry about this.

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Hardly, I lived in AZ for a while and it's a very legitimate fear. Minorities (not just those who are racially profiled as illegal immigrants) routinely are asked by officers to present identification at fucking barnes and nobles of all places. Source, friends, family, and observation.

--Towns aside from phoenix

I'd have to say that that may be your experience, however I have to voice that for the decade I lived there I haven't heard of any crazy harassment stories. Maybe just my luck though.

I lived there for about a decade too, had many friends who weren't white though.

Isn't this just a "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" rebuttal?

It sounded like "if you aren't breaking the law, you have nothing to fear".

I'm not saying that's true, or not. I don't know.

How many people have been incorrectly detained or deported by Arpaio?

I'd say that dealing with Arpaio and worrying about treatment as a minority are not necessarily intertwined issues. Arpaio's office isn't the only law enforcement outfit operating in the area. He's just at the county-level. You still have city- and state-level (?)[1] law enforcement plus border patrol.

[1] I'm not specifically sure how AZ works this -- e.g. California has "highway patrol" but Michigan has "state police".

That probably has more to do with location than politics.

I've seen more Border Patrol in San Diego than in Phoenix.

And Phoenix is not within 100 miles of the border, while San Francisco is (the border includes the oceans), so Phoenix may actually have a theoretical advantage there.

https://www.aclu.org/constitution-100-mile-border-zone

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