He had lost his naturalization certificate, so Ochoa took his U.S. passport, Social Security card, driver's license and Arizona voter identification card to the local Social Security office. He was told he'd have to request new papers from the Department of Homeland Security, which could take up to 10 months.
"I love this country, I'm happy in this country," said Ochoa, a father of two, who escaped eviction this month only because a church group paid his rent. "The guy who made this law, I don't know him. He's started destroying a lot of families."
Katherine Lotspeich, acting chief of the agency that runs E-Verify, said officials will introduce a number of changes, starting in May, to make it easier to fix the problems that Ochoa and other naturalized citizens have encountered.
"The last thing we want is to have people who are naturalized citizens deal with this cumbersome process" to get paperwork, Lotspeich said.
She added that Social Security should have accepted Ochoa's passport as proof of citizenship.
Local law enforcement efforts, meanwhile, have drawn complaints about racial profiling.
For the last two years, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has been testing how far a local law enforcement agency can go in combating illegal immigration. His deputies and trained volunteers have detained more than 1,000 illegal immigrants, many of whom were stopped for minor infractions and then asked about their immigration status. State legislators this month moved toward passing a law requiring all local police departments to start fighting illegal immigration.
"I believe that if you get tough," Arpaio said, illegal immigrants "will disappear."
Immigrant-rights groups and attorneys have complained that Arpaio's attack on illegal immigrants leads to Latinos constantly being asked about their citizenship status. Some cite Munoz's case as an example of perils to Arpaio's approach.
Munoz was held for 15 hours after being stopped on a speeding violation in Phoenix in December. Deputies discovered she did not have a driver's license. She was placed in a van with several arrested illegal immigrants, taken to jail and held for several hours of processing before a judge released her.
"It's only because of the way you look," Munoz said. "Even though I'm from here, I don't feel safe to go out and do anything."
Sheriff's Capt. Paul Chagolla, a department spokesman, said Munoz was detained for driving without a license. She was kept with the illegal immigrants because "when we run an operation we don't always have transport" for individual suspects, he said.
Arpaio said that there have been few specific complaints of profiling and that his deputies ask suspects about immigration status only when they see a possible crime committed.
He has no apologies for his tactics or their contribution to a flight of illegal immigrants from Arizona.
"The more who leave, the better," he said. "They shouldn't be here in the first place."
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nicholas.riccardi@latimes.com
