Despite a festering budget deficit, lawmakers have found a way to grant Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu’s request for funds for border-related immigration enforcement.

An investigator interviewed Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio for 5A? hours as part of a probe into allegations of misconduct involving the lawman's top aides.

Despite a festering budget deficit, lawmakers have found a way to grant Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu's request for funds for border-related immigration enforcement.

A proposal to give Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu money for immigration-related enforcement survived a rigorous debate in the Senate on April 14.

Arizona budget problems could snag legislation to provide Pinal County with $5 million to fight drug smugglers.

The Senate Appropriations Committee Tuesday gave its stamp of approval to a proposal that would give Pinal County’s Republican sheriff $5 million to help fight smugglers.

Explosive growth seemed to assure that Pinal County would anchor one of Arizona’s nine congressional districts in 2012, and recently released census data further fueled the speculation.

Sheriff Paul Babeu is pushing the state to give Pinal County $5 million for fighting drug smugglers.

The House has approved a measure that will give $5 million to Pinal County to fight drug smugglers, despite opposition from Democrats who said the money would be better spent paying for a transplant program that was cut last year.

Maricopa County has added more people – almost a million – than any other U.S. county in the past decade, but that growth has slowed substantially since the economy soured, according Census Bureau estimates released Monday.