Today's editorial selection comes to us from In These Times (via AlterNet). The piece by Andrew Seltzer compares the situation in Maricopa County, Arizona as the watershed immigration moment that Selma was to the civil rights movement decades ago.

The article is pretty long, but definitely worth a read. Here's the opening section–

The battle began in front of a furniture store.

Like hundreds of other street corners, the intersection at 36th Street and Thomas Road in Phoenix was where immigrant workers arrived before dawn, hoping that someone would pick them up for a day's work in construction. But last October, the parking lot of Pruitt's furniture became more than a pick-up spot. First, the store's owner hired off-duty sheriff's deputies to act as security guards, claiming that the laborers were causing a disturbance.

Later that month, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the self-proclaimed "toughest sheriff in America," decided to act on a handful of complaints he had received. He made Pruitt's parking lot the centerpiece of a neighborhood sweep. Arpaio's deputies began arresting undocumented immigrants in the neighborhood and turning them over to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation proceedings.

In response, civil and immigrants' rights activists began gathering every Saturday outside the store, protesting what they believe were racially and ethnically motivated crackdowns. Soon, nativist groups from across the southwestern United States -- with names like the Patriots Border Alliance and Mothers Against Illegal Aliens -- arrived to counter-demonstrate. Waving American flags, the anti-immigrant crowd stood across the street, holding signs that declared support for the mass arrests, the closing of the Mexican border and the immediate deportation of all "illegal aliens."

The circus-like scene made for good TV, and Arpaio, a media hound by most accounts, seemed egged on by the protests. In a Dec. 5 sheriff's office press release, Arpaio said, "I will not give up. All the activists must stop their protest before I stop enforcing the law in that area."

Finally, in January, after more than 67 undocumented immigrants had been arrested, the owner of Pruitt's agreed to stop hiring off-duty officers.

Arpaio, however, wasn't done.