Apparently, an undocumented immigrant was arrested after working at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station (or trying to, the report isn't clear).
Of course, this means that Sheriff Joe gets to go on TV and rail against "illegals". I'm not sure if the linked video has the original airing from the 530 news, but in that airing, Joe really expressed his ignorance of just how Palo Verde conducts its security - and of PVNGS itself.
FAIL #1
Sheriff Joe thinks Palo Verde is a government facility.
FALSE. Palo Verde is owned by an alliance of utilities, and operated by Arizona Public Service (APS). Publicly traded company. Of note is that Palo Verde is among a minority of nuclear plants that do NOT contract out their security. APS trains their security team in house. I believe they've been one of the top ranked nuclear security teams in the nation by the NRC.
FAIL #2
Cruz Alvares was reported (and mentioned by Joe) to be working in the plant.
The likelihood of that being the case is pretty much ZERO. Why? In order to work near ANY critical plant infrastructure, you have to be cleared with the FBI. It's not a DoD clearance, but damn close. To have them assign a clearance to Mr. Alvarez while others with relatively "clean" records go through 6 months to a year of interviews, seems very unlikely. There is very little damage (if any) that you can do outside of "the fence". And if you try anything, there are always those friendly gentlemen with AR-15s who would have a word with you.
Lastly,
FAIL #3
Mr. Alvarez was a contractor. As is too often the case, contract companies aren't the best at being thorough with paperwork. To suggest (as Joe has done) that the Palo Verde security team should triple check every uncleared contractor's immigration status shows just how far Joe would go in his war against immigrants. I'm not absolving APS and Palo Verde of responsibility- but the PVNGS security team really did the best they could - they found the discrepency and notified the authorities.
All without any security risk to the plant.
Makes you wonder if THAT is what Joe's pissed off about, huh?
Fri Jul 15, 2011 at 7:53 AM PT: The Arizona Republic/AZCentral posted a more factual story : http://www.azcentral.com/...
This pretty much shows how ignorant (or purposefully deceitful) Ol' Joe is. Another reason why Arizona news organizations shouldn't run to Sheriff Joe when they want the truth of the story.