Proud of his prison experiment, Arpaio frequently invited the media to witness new cohorts of detainees being sent to Tent City, as he did in He said this was an inexpensive way to get his anti-immigration message out to the public. Jaime Valdez, 35, spent four months of in the separate outdoor unit for around undocumented immigrants.
On cold days, temperatures reached as low as 5C 41F. Holes torn in the tents let in the wind and rain, drenching the beds. Valdez and other prisoners made ropes to hold the tent canvases together out of black trash bags they had been given as raincoats. Inmates were forced to work on chain gangs — which, save for a few exceptions, had been abandoned by the US in Maricopa County ran the only all-female chain gang in the country.
Other detainees had mandatory work inside the jail, and some were part of a furlough programme — still in effect — that allowed them to go outside to work but return to sleep in Tent City. Valdez worked, uncompensated, in the laundry department, organising uniform supplies orders for the five other jails. Crenshaw died of complications in after he was held in confinement in another jail. Another inmate, Phillip Wilson, died after a beating by other prisoners in Tent City the same year.
Arpaio was warned about the unsafe conditions in a number of reviews about the jail, Manning says. Still, the jail remained open. Presidential candidates visited it and it made international headlines, with media crews visiting from Japan and England.
Tourists and the public were invited too. The Arizona Republic reports that Tent City's remaining inmates were taken from the 7-acre compound in southwest Phoenix late Saturday and checked into the county's Durango Jail a few blocks away.
County Sheriff Paul Penzone announced in April that he was closing the complex of jail tents that helped make his predecessor, Joe Arpaio, a national law enforcement figure. The barbed-wire-surrounded compound was part of a broader campaign by Arpaio to enact get-tough measures in his jails such as banning cigarettes, creating inmate chain gangs and dressing them in old-time striped prison uniforms.
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