Opponents have filed a second lawsuit challenging the Maricopa County Attorney's prosecution of illegal immigrants under the state's anti-human smuggling statute. 162 convictions have been obtained so far under the statute.

The glacier of illegal immigration is starting to melt away. In Maricopa County, this is happening because local law enforcement officials are keeping the heat on both smugglers and the illegal immigrants who hire them.

Recent victories in our courts have both bolstered and confirmed the legality of the joint anti-smuggling program conducted by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office and the Maricopa County Attorney's Office. The latest milestone came on Oct. 19 when a Maricopa County jury found Adolfo Guzman-Garcia, an illegal immigrant, guilty of conspiring to commit human smuggling.

This verdict was the first time in U.S. history that a jury has found an illegal immigrant guilty of the crime of smuggling himself into the United States. On Nov. 20, a second jury convicted an illegal immigrant of conspiring to commit human smuggling. This was the latest good news for an enforcement program that has significantly disrupted the human-smuggling trade in the greater Phoenix area.

In September 2005, our office issued an opinion interpreting Arizona's human-smuggling statute. The opinion stated that the Sheriff's Office could arrest both smugglers and illegal immigrants who arranged to be smuggled. In May 2006, deputies arrested the first of many truckloads of illegal immigrants. Our office then sought and obtained from the county grand jury the first indictments under this new statute.

The County Attorney's Office promptly was besieged by a broad array of forces opposed to these prosecutions. The local criminal defense bar closed ranks. Pro-illegal immigrant interest groups organized a series of raucous public protests and a media campaign to pressure Sheriff Joe Arpaio and me into dropping the cases.

In an act of gross meddling in U.S. sovereignty, the Mexican government, through its local consulate, brought attorneys from Los Angeles to challenge the constitutionality of Arizona's human-smuggling law. The Mexican government opposed this law presumably because Mexico benefits greatly from illegal immigration. Money sent by illegal immigrants in the United States back to Mexico is the second-largest source of income for that country; only the oil industry generates more revenue.

Nevertheless, the County Attorney's Office has won every substantive legal battle in this fight. Both Superior Court judges who have been asked to rule on these prosecutions have upheld them. In separate written opinions that cited federal and state law, Judges Thomas O'Toole and David Cole confirmed that the County Attorney's Office has interpreted the statute properly.

Last week, the same Los Angeles law firm hired by the Mexican government apparently filed yet another lawsuit, this time in federal court (I say "apparently" because the attorneys gave a copy of the suit to the media right before Thanksgiving but our office has yet to be served).

This suit against Sheriff Arpaio and me is simply a repackaging of the same issues rejected by state judges, including one judge who is a former federal public defender.

Our continuing success in prosecuting these cases set the stage for the recent jury verdicts finding illegal immigrants guilty of conspiracy to commit human smuggling. These convictions bring the total number of people successfully prosecuted by the county attorney's office for violating the human-smuggling statute to 162. This represents a 90 percent conviction rate.

The recent shift in human-smuggling routes to areas outside Maricopa County likewise is good news. This movement, and the fact that sheriff's deputies are having a much more difficult time arresting smugglers than they were six months ago, indicates that the current enforcement regime is disrupting old smuggling practices and causing a certain number of coyotes and their customers to skirt the county entirely.

Much work remains to be done. To end the illegal immigration crisis, we must not only engage local law enforcement in this campaign, but also secure the border and penalize employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. Those interested in receiving regular updates on this three-pronged fight against illegal immigration can log on to our office's new Web site devoted to this topic, illegalimmigration journal.com.

Even as these measures against illegal immigration continue, it's important for us to take stock of the victories along the way. They are invariably hard-fought, and they provide encouraging evidence that our efforts are working.

This article first appeared in the Arizona Republic on November 28, 2006