PHOENIX (Reuters) – A U.S. Latino citizen fought back tears at an Arizona sheriff’s racial profiling trial on Wednesday as he described being pulled over by a deputy and having his groin frisked during a traffic stop he said was motivated by his ethnicity.

Contractor Daniel Magos, 67, testified at the civil trial of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio that he was pulled over by a deputy as he drove with his U.S.-born wife to meet a client in December 2009, ostensibly because of a missing license plate on the trailer of his pickup.

PHOENIX (Reuters) – Veteran Arizona lawman Joe Arpaio, who calls himself “America’s toughest sheriff,” denied on Tuesday that his deputies targeted people because of the color of their skin in a controversial crackdown on illegal immigration.

Arpaio, sheriff of Arizona’s Maricopa County, was testifying in a class-action lawsuit to test whether police can target illegal immigrants without racially profiling Hispanic citizens and legal residents.

PHOENIX (Reuters) – Arizona lawman Joe Arpaio, who calls himself America’s toughest sheriff, was accused of racial profiling as a trial began on Thursday in a class-action lawsuit alleging he discriminated against Latinos in his crackdown on illegal immigration.

The case will test whether the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office can target those in the country illegally in immigration sweeps without racially profiling Hispanic citizens and legal residents.

PHOENIX (Reuters) – Mexican tourist Manuel Ortega Melendres was a passenger in a car pulled over by deputies of hard-line Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio during a sweep for illegal immigrants, ostensibly because the vehicle’s driver was speeding.

But moments later Melendres was arrested, despite having a valid visa and producing identification, while the vehicle’s white driver was neither cited nor taken into custody.

PHOENIX (Reuters) – Opponents of Arizona’s tough crackdown on illegal immigration made a bid on Tuesday to challenge a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that will allow police to enforce the so-called show-me-your-papers provision.

A coalition of civil rights organizations asked a federal judge in Phoenix to stay implementation of the key provision of the Arizona law that requires police to check the immigration status of people they stop, the American Civil Liberties Union said.

By Tim Gaynor

(Reuters) – A former U.S. federal immigration intelligence director who lured four subordinates into fraudulently claiming more than $500,000 in fake expense and pay claims was sentenced to 20 months in prison on Friday, authorities said.

James M. Woosley, 48, the former acting director of the intelligence office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, was sentenced in federal court in the District of Columbia, ICE said in a statement.

PHOENIX (Reuters) – Police have discovered a sophisticated drug smuggling tunnel the length of two football fields running beneath the Arizona border with Mexico, and arrested three suspects, authorities said on Thursday.

The tunnel measuring 240 yards linked a building in San Luis, a small town in far western Arizona, to an ice plant in the Mexican border city of San Luis Rio Colorado, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said in a news release.

PHOENIX (Reuters) – A 96-year-old former governor of Arizona said on Thursday he was stopped and detained by Border Patrol agents in triple-digit heat last month after the vehicle he was traveling in triggered a radiation sensor.

Raul Castro, who made history in 1974 when he became the state’s first and only Mexican-American governor, was stopped by agents at a checkpoint on a U.S. highway north of Nogales, Arizona, on June 12 as he was being driven to a lunch in Tucson to celebrate his birthday.

PHOENIX (Reuters) – An Arizona man collapsed in court and died shortly after a jury convicted him of torching his mansion, and police are not ruling out the possibility that he may have taken a fatal substance.

Defendant Michael Marin, 53, collapsed just after a Maricopa County Superior Court jury found him guilty on Thursday of arson of an occupied structure, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s office said.

PHOENIX (Reuters) – For Arizona sheriff Antonio Estrada, enforcing a state law that requires officers to determine the immigration status of people they stop and suspect are in the United States illegally was always going to be difficult.

But that is exactly what he will soon be expected to do now that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the most controversial aspect of Arizona’s crackdown on illegal immigrants.