By Paul Bremmer,

When the U.S. Department of Justice filed criminal contempt charges against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Oct. 17, accusing the well-known lawman of intentionally violating a federal judge’s order not to arrest illegal aliens without evidence they had broken state law, it was beyond even the imagination of George Orwell.

So says Daniel Horowitz, senior editor at Conservative Review.

“Our Founders are rolling over in their graves at the sight of a sheriff being placed on trial for taking common sense steps to protect his state’s sovereignty and applying federal law in cases of reasonable suspicion – laws over which Congress, not the judiciary, has plenary authority,” Horowitz declared in a recent column.

Federal judge Susan Bolton requested the criminal charges at a hearing the previous week. In August, Judge G. Murray Snow of the U.S. District Court of Arizona had referred Arpaio for misdemeanor criminal contempt charges for not obeying a previous court injunction against his practice of apprehending those he reasonably suspected of being in the country illegally.

The injunction grew out of a 2007 class-action lawsuit brought by the ACLU and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund accusing Arpaio of racial profiling.

Horowitz noted the Arizona sheriff is essentially being punished for enforcing federal immigration law within his jurisdiction while violent criminal aliens remain on the run all over Arizona. He called the situation “Orwellian beyond imagination.”

“While thousands of criminal aliens are being released onto the streets of Arizona, Sheriff Arpaio is the one who is facing the prospect of jail time,” Horowitz said. “There is something fundamentally wrong when a state like Arizona is being destroyed by a foreign invasion and local elected officials are hamstrung from defending the state, even though they are following federal law. At the same time, sanctuary cities that thwart federal immigration law are being rewarded by the federal judiciary.”

“While Arpaio admits to mistakenly violating the injunction, the broader question is how a federal court can issue an injunction against sovereignty laws of a nation using … you guessed it … the Fourteenth Amendment,” Horowitz said. “Arpaio was acting according to federal law, which requires the federal government to respond to state inquiries on an individual’s immigration status [8 U. S. C. §1373c]. Yet, he is potentially facing jail time while illegal aliens chanted ‘Si se puede! Si se puede!’ outside the court house. This is an image and a perverse juxtaposition even Orwell could never have imagined.”

Adding to the “perverse juxtaposition” is the fact that, as Horowitz pointed out, courts have granted illegal aliens standing to sue over the enforcement of federal immigration laws, but Arpaio was never able to get standing to sue President Obama for violating federal immigration law when he implemented DACA.

Horowitz noted Arpaio has been so tough on illegal immigrants because his jurisdiction is among the most dangerous hotbeds of illegal alien crime in the country. The author shared some facts from his book.

“As of 2013, it was estimated that there were 630,700 illegal aliens residing in Arizona (including American-born anchor babies),” Horowitz wrote. “That is a population of foreign invaders larger than the total population of any single colony at the time of our founding.

“Over 10 percent of the state’s public school population is comprised of illegal alien children. When coupled with the fiscal strain of health care and incarceration, the total cost of illegal immigration is $2.4 billion a year.

“The Arizona Department of Corrections estimates that illegal aliens comprise 17 percent of its prison population and 22 percent of all felony defendants in Maricopa County.

“Arizona has become the drug smuggling capital of the country. From 2010 to 2015, heroin seizures in Arizona have increased by 207 percent, while methamphetamine seizures grew by 310 percent. In FY 2014, there were more pounds of marijuana seized in the Tucson corridor than every other border sector combined.”

The 84-year-old sheriff, who faces up to six months in jail if convicted, will find it tough sledding because of the current makeup of the federal courts, according to Horowitz.

“Arpaio has a grim road ahead of him – as does the entire state of Arizona – if Congress doesn’t strip the courts of their foray into immigration law,” he suggested. “Judge Bolton was the original district judge who placed the injunction on SB 1070, Arizona’s enforcement law. The Ninth Circuit is … well … the Ninth Circuit. And [Chief Justice John] Roberts has already agreed with the five leftists on the court that states must follow the whims of international law and the Obama administration instead of congressional statutes.”