If 80% (or so) illegals in this country are hispanic, how is it racial to target areas where your sweeps would have the largest effect? I mean, why as a law enforcement officer, would you sweep, say, Scottsdale?
To go deeper into classy's response: In this country we have
individual rights. What profiling does is water down those rights -- it says, "No, you don't have any absolute rights granted an American citizen; instead you're only warranted some degree of accommodation (possibly zero) which I'm casually calculating based on my feelings about your race as I casually lump you all together."
Profiling is insidious because it's so casual. As negative feelings towards the group increase, the feeling as to the value of any rights of theirs decreases. As that calculation only hinges on internal consistency it can get majorly out of whack from an absolute standpoint. (It "feels" in balance, but if you were to step out of it and look at it from the affected individual's perspective you'd see that it's completely unfair for them to be singled out that way.)
Profiling almost always singles out minorities because
1. It depends on the profiler forgetting about the individuality of the people involved
+
2. It is generally the large power groupings who determine who is enforcing shit, but:
2a. if you're the one doing the profiling you aren't about to forget your
own individuality or its ties to your own grouping!
I'm a heterosexual white male atheist. Could I go around and casually treat heterosexual white male atheists as sub-human as a group? Not without it being fucking obvious that I'm shitting where I eat!
This is why profiling always comes up with conservatards as "the answer": As they don't have a Liberal's intelligence with which to easily achieve an enlightened perspective, the problem is invisible to them as long as they're not profiling themselves!
Unfortunately this is a fed witch hunt.
And he may very well be a "witch."
If white supremacy is casually de rigeur (which it certainly seems to be -- conservatards pride themselves on being racist now, and conservatardism is rampant in the South), and Sheriff Arpaio is casually racist, his racism being invisible to conservatards doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. An intelligent inquiry may very well show that it does exist and that he violated individuals' civil rights.
A racist being unable to see his own racism does not excuse it causing one to violate the law. Federal law demands that a sheriff act with a Liberal's enlightenment.