Pulitzer winning NYT reporter Linda Greenhouse announced in a recent column on the Arizona immigration law... "I’m not going back to Arizona as long as it remains a police state, which is what the appalling anti-immigrant bill that Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law last week has turned it into."

President Obama was quick to challenge the Arizona law. He called it misguided, irresponsible and a threat to civil liberties.
The immigration law that Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed into law last week has been compared by some pundits to policies enacted in apartheid South Africa and the former Soviet Union. Colorado Democrat, Rep Jared Polis, said it evokes memories of Nazi Germany: “It is absolutely reminiscent of second class status of Jews in Germany prior to World War II when they had to have their papers with them at all times and were subject to routine inspections at the suspicion of being Jewish.”
In the United States illegal immigration is a federal crime. Arizona has now also made it a state crime. Police have been granted broad powers to detain anyone on the suspicion of being in the state illegally. The potential for abuse-of-power is enormous. As Maricopa county Sheriff Joe Arpaio has demonstrated many times in the past, give him an inch and he will take a mile.
Ironically enough Brewer has ordered the creation of a training course to instruct officers how to avoid racial profiling. This is bit like offering training to pitbulls on how to avoid going for the jugular. Arizona cops are hard-wired to profile. The state is majority white with about half a million Hispanics. In Arizona it's a case of "driving while brown." When it comes to the enforcement of state immigration law, racial profiling is a background reality no matter how many courses Governor Brewer comes up with.
Anyone who has followed law enforcement in Arizona will be well aware of the attitude Sheriff Arpaio brings to the job. Not long ago the House Judiciary Committee issued a damning statement about his activities:

Sheriff Arpaio has repeatedly demonstrated disregard for the rights of Hispanics in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Under the guise of immigration enforcement, his staff has conducted raids in residential neighborhoods in a manner condemned by the community as racial profiling.

It's not just the more liberal minded who have a problem with this law, Fox News regular Judge Andrew Napolitano calls it "a disaster for Arizona." During a Fox News appearance with Neil Cavuto, Napolitano said: "She's gonna bankrupt the Republican Party and the state of Arizona... Her budget will be paying the legal bills of the lawyers who sue on behalf of those that were stopped... This will be a disaster for Arizona to say nothing of the fact that it's so unconstitutional that I predict a federal judge will prevent Arizona from enforcing it as soon as they attempt to do so. That will probably be tomorrow."