Maricopa County, Arizona (CNN) The arrest of a six-year-old girl is at the center of a political fight over immigration. The child was arrested in Arizona Friday, along with 15 other suspected illegal immigrants. The group was reportedly driving a van across the country when Maricopa County Sheriff's deputies stopped the group and turned them over to U-S Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And while the stop and arrest is standard procedure, many critics are upset the sheriff arrested the child. Critics say Sheriff Joe Arpaio is using the girl as a political pawn in the wake of President Obama's plan to allow some young immigrants a two-year deferral from deportation. It's an allegation the sheriff denies. If he was a real lawman, he would try to find ways of helping those little kids, instead of using them for political media purposes, saying that he's going to keep on arresting illegal aliens like the way he says it.
So there was no politics in this. And when you have a six-year-old girl, I think that's newsworthy, regardless of what the circumstances are, whether you call it an arrest or a detainment. Police say none of the suspects claimed the child, who said she's from El Salvador. Immigration officials says more that 16-hundred unaccompanied and undocumented minors have been transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement since October 1. That already almost matches the total of the previous 12 months.