ACLU wins judgment against sheriff

In what was considered to be the first federal lawsuit challenging the “papers please” provision of Arizona’s SB 1070, an Eloy woman received a judgment of $25,000 against Sheriff Paul Babeu and two of his deputies.

Maria Cortes was arrested Sept. 29, 2012, after a traffic stop and then transported to a Border Patrol station on a suspected immigration violation. She spent five days in custody.

At the time of the arrest, Cortes had a pending U Visa application from her status as a domestic violence victim. She claimed the deputies disregarded that.

The U Visa is reserved from nonimmigrant victims of crime and their family members.

“It was a nightmare to spend those five days in detention not knowing what was going to happen to me or my children,” Cortes said in a statement.

The American Civil Liberties Union took up her case in U.S. District Court and sued the county, the sheriff and the deputies involved in the arrest and transport. The ruling handed down Dec. 17 states, “judgment is entered in favor of plaintiff and against defendants Pinal County, Sheriff Paul Babeu, in his official capacity, and Deputies Chad Lakosky and Kristina Stoltz in their individual capacities, in the amount of $25,001, plus taxable costs including reasonable attorneys’ fees.”

The money is paid out from the Arizona Counties Insurance Pool.

“This was clearly a legal strategy to avoid the hundreds of thousands of dollars it would have cost to litigate and represented a better way to get rid of this frivolous lawsuit," Babeu said in his official statement.

According to Araceli Martinez-Olguin, staff attorney with the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, the ACLU filed suit to “highlight the harm that stems from having a ‘show me your papers’ law on the books.”

Cortes received her U-Visa in 2013.