Gregory Lynn Shrader, Oklahoma Man, Arrested For Mailing Explosive Package To Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio

Authorities said on Tuesday that 55-year-old Gregory Lynn Shrader of Jay, Oklahoma, had been taken into custody last Thursday in connection to a suspicious package addressed to Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has gained national renown as a villain in many immigrant and Latino communities and a hero for anti-illegal immigration crusaders. The Associated Press reports that a criminal complaint filed against Shrader accuses him of mailing a homemade bomb to Arpaio, the sheriff of Arizona’s Maricopa County, on last April 11.

The Arizona Republic writes that the package raised alarms with workers at a Flagstaff post office for its excessive number of stamps and typewritten addressee label. After inspection agents at the office found a silver grain-like substance spilling from one of the box’s seams and determined it to be an explosive smokeless powder, police were called to the scene. An explosives team disabled what turned out to be a dud; the device lacked a key bridge wire, making it inoperable.

But the criminal complaint said there was probable cause that Shrader intended the box to "make a threat to injure, kill or intimidate Joe Arpaio by means of an explosive." The suspect’s potential motives are as yet unclear. "It's good to have the guy off the street," Arpaio said on Tuesday, according to the AP. "I'm grateful that the feds did a good job. The postal service and the FBI have been working on this for almost a year, and they got the guy."

Arpaio rose to fame for his zealous immigration enforcement, including traffic stops carried out by his office which were found to use race as a motivating factor by a federal judge this past fall. That judge barred his office from targeting “particular communities, locations or geographic areas for targeted traffic enforcement based to any degree on the racial or ethnic composition of the community" and prohibited them from using race as a factor in whether or not to pull over vehicles to check the occupants’ legal status.