Art by Humberto Ramos
The Marvel superhero team the Champions – Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel), Miles Morales (Spider-Man), Amadeus Cho (the Hulk), Sam Alexander (Nova), a young Scott Summers from the X-Men – have fought their fair share of supervillains, both together and separately. In 2017, however, the group squared off against a different type of villain, a democratically elected sheriff in the American Southwest who was waging a private war against immigrants, the homeless, and the LGBTQ community.
“Daly County, where hate crimes have skyrocketed since your election,” Nova says upon first meeting Sheriff Studdard in Champions #5. “This mosque fire. The shots fired into the homeless encampment. The beatings outside the gay club.” Ms. Marvel then adds, “The swastika sprayed on the temple, the noose in front of the black church.”
“Shall we go on?” Amadeus Cho asks. “Because it’s a long list, and we know it by heart from how you play it off on social media like it’s nothing.”
The real-world sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona – Joe Arpaio – didn’t start fires, shoot at the homeless, or attack the LGBTQ community like the fictional Sheriff Studdard in Daly County, but he did wage a private war against undocumented migrants by routinely arresting and turning them over to Border Patrol for deportation.
Arpaio first made headlines in 1993 when he constructed rudimentary jails out of Korean War-era surplus tents. By 1997, there were over 560 male inmates living in “Tent City,” sharing eight showers, eleven sinks, eight permanent toilets, and twelve portable toilets. A large, blinking “vacancy” sign was attached to a water tower and inmates were forced to wear pink boxer shorts.
In 2005, the state of Arizona enacted a Human Smuggling Law intended to help law enforcement crack down on human smugglers. As journalists Terry Greene Sterling and Jude Joffe-Block explain in their 2021 book Driving While Brown: Sheriff Joe Arpaio versus the Latino Resistance, Joe Arpaio interpreted the law more broadly, arguing that it also allowed for the arrest of migrants who paid smugglers because they conspired to violate the law. If convicted, migrants were deported after serving their sentence and denied legal entry afterwards because of they were now convicted felons.
Back in the fictional Daley County, the Champions are joined by Gwenpool, a native of our own universe who was transported into the world of Marvel Comics and became a superhero to remain relevant. “They aren’t police,” she says of Sheriff Studdard’s deputies. “They’re a paramilitary group of subversives, like Hydra. Sons of the Serpents. The Jonas Brothers. On the Earth I come from, you’re all comic book characters. I know how your stories go. Bad cops always turn out to be supervillains, or controlled by supervillains, or supervillains in training.”
“Gwenpool, I don’t know where you think you’re from, or what you think you’ve read,” Ms. Marvel replies. “But corruption and injustice and racism can infiltrate authority structures all by themselves, without a supervillain’s help.”
Mexican migrants regularly gathered on street corners in Maricopa County in the hopes of being hired as day laborers. Sheriff Joe Arpaio ordered his deputies to pull over any vehicle suspected of picking migrants for minor traffic violations. The day laborers – who were primarily in the United States without proper documentation – were then taken into custody and transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation.
A street corner near M. D. Pruitt’s Home Furnishings became a focal point for both restrictionists and pro-immigration activists for several months in late 2007. “Want to see America unraveling?” the New York Times rhetorically asked. “Come here, to Thomas Road and 35th Street.” Each side squared off against the other on a daily basis, alternating shouts of “No Human Being is Illegal” and “Illegals Go Home.”
While the pro-immigration side was a mixture of migrants, students, and the clergy, the restrictionists were mostly older white Americans frustrated with the growing illegal border crossings from Mexico into Arizona. They not only protested but also voiced support for Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose popularity in Maricopa County was souring as a result of his anti-migrant efforts.
Although the Champions are able to sweep the Northstar LGBTQ Center in Daly County after a bomb threat and stop a group of teenagers from spray painting racial slurs on another building, they soon realize that their traditional approach to fighting crime isn’t working. “We have to be smarter than this,” Scott Summers tells his colleagues. “We can’t slow this down on our own. We have to help get the truth about Studdard out there. He’s the one stoking the hate.”
Summers suggests a visit with Deputy Sims, who earlier seemed sympathetic to their cause. “Studdard’s got influence and diamond-hard lawyers,” Sims now explains as to why he can’t take action against the sheriff. “Plus, he’s crazy popular. Opening this case right now would tear this whole powder-keg county apart. To about half of Daly County, Studdard’s word is law.”
In Driving While Brown, Terry Greene Sterling and Jude Joffe-Block write that Sheriff Joe Arpaio regularly used intimidation and the power of his office against anyone who opposed him. In October 2007, for instance, two owners of the alternative weekly newspaper Phoenix New Times were jailed after running negative articles about Arpaio. The legal director of the local American Civil Liberties Union was arrested for trespassing after parking in the lot of Pruitt’s Home Furnishings. Even Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon found himself falsely accused of molesting a teenage boy after requesting a civil rights investigation of Arpaio by the U.S. Justice Department.
The list goes on, with numerous county judges, supervisors, and employees likewise targeted by the sheriff’s office. The voters of Maricopa County, meanwhile, reelected Sheriff Joe Arpaio in both 2008 and 2012.
At the end of Champions #5, Deputy Sims in the fictional Daly County decides to take a stand against Sheriff Studdard after all. Gwenpool, however, is still convinced that a supervillain is pulling the strings. “Listen,” Ms. Marvel says to her. “Sometimes – as we are sorely learning – problems are complex. Sometimes, there’s just not anything to hit. Do you understand?”
Gwenpool merely shrugs and heads off to find the supervillain Mesmero as the Champions converge on the street where Deputy Sims is speaking to a crowd outside the sheriff’s office – not to fight but to simply support Sims and “act like Champions.”
Terry Greene Sterling and Jude Joffe-Block spotlight many of the real-world heroes who stood up against Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Driving While Brown. Mexican American activists routinely staged protests against Arpaio despite the threats of retribution and funneled information to the Department of Justice on civil rights abuses. Others in the community helped file and fund a class action lawsuit on behalf of migrants illegally abused by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.
In 2014, U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow ordered Joe Arpaio to stop the racial profiling tactics of his deputies, an edict that the sheriff ignored. Formal charges of contempt were filed against him in October 2016 and Arpaio subsequently lost reelection the following month. Although found guilty in July 2017, he was quickly pardoned by President Donald Trump.
For the Mexican American community in Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio’s ouster from office by voters and his subsequent federal conviction was vindication after years of protesting against him.
Anthony Letizia