Elected officials, immigrant activists, and church and non-profit leaders lashed out against Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon's decision that he no longer supports a Police Department policy that bars officers from routinely asking about people's immigration status.
Some are longtime friends of the mayor.
Privately they had applauded the Democratic mayor for resisting mounting public pressure to enforce immigration laws even as Maricopa County's two top law-enforcement officials were arresting and prosecuting undocumented immigrants every day.
But in a news conference Wednesday across the street from Phoenix City Hall, the group of 30 questioned the mayor's motives, accusing him of caving in to the far Republican right.
The group included Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox; Edmund Hidalgo, chief operating officer of the non-profit Chicanos Por La Causa; and Harry Garewal, president and CEO of the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
They believe a stricter policy that allows questioning of legal status will spur racial profiling against legal immigrants and Hispanic citizens, scare witnesses from reporting crimes and intensify fears of mass deportations in the immigrant community.
About 500,000 undocumented immigrants live in Arizona, the Pew Hispanic Center estimates.
"You cannot implement this policy without racial profiling," state Rep. Steve Gallardo, D-Phoenix, said. "These changes (are going to be) made without any community input, without any thoughts of unintended consequences."
The group will have a town hall meeting at 6:30 p.m. Dec. 13 at South Mountain High School in south Phoenix to talk about the policy.
The meeting is open to everyone, and opinions will be noted and sent to the four-member panel - which includes two former U.S. attorneys, an ex-Arizona attorney general and a former Maricopa County attorney - that Gordon put together to develop the policy. About 2,000 people are expected to show up.
"They have never been on the street, and they ought to hear from the street," said Alfredo Gutierrez, a talk-show host on Spanish-language radio and a longtime friend of the mayor. "He has blinked, he has relented to the pressure. It is appropriate
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