PHOENIX -- The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office says it plans to train its entire force of 881 deputies in enforcing federal immigration law.

The announcement comes about four months after the federal government stripped 100 deputies in the office of their power to make federal immigration arrests.

• Special Section: Sheriff Joe Arpaio Chronicles

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said the federal government's rebuke won't prevent his deputies from cracking down on illegal immigration and that federal law gives local police agencies the power to enforce federal immigration law without getting approvals from Washington.

"My policy is, you come across an illegal alien, there is no discretion," Arpaio said at a news briefing Monday afternoon. "I'm talking about the normal course of duty. We are not going to let them go, knowing they are here illegally, knowing we have the authority to arrest them. We will arrest them."

He said his office's entire force needs to be trained because he expects immigration-related problems to worsen.

Arpaio has taken a more aggressive approach to immigration enforcement than any other police boss in Arizona. Since early 2008, he has launched 13 immigration and crime sweeps across metropolitan Phoenix.

The sweeps consist of deputies and volunteer posse members flooding an area of a city looking for traffic violators, people wanted on criminal warrants and others. Some of the patrols have been in heavily Latino areas.

Announcement Sparks Immediate Protests

Monday's announcement sparked a handful of immigration rights to protest outside the sheriff's training academy where the news briefing was held. Lydia Guzman, who heads up Somos Americans, which fights for the rights of Hispanics, said this latest move by the sheriff will subject the Hispanic community to widespread racial profiling.

Arpaio's office lost its federal immigration arrest powers in October, when the U.S. government, which does most of the nation's immigration enforcement, changed its rules for allowing local police to enforce more expansive federal immigration laws.

Arpaio has since conducted two more sweeps using state immigration laws.

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating his office for alleged discrimination and for unconstitutional searches and seizures, though the federal agency would provide no other details on its probe. Arpaio believes the inquiry is focused on his immigration efforts.

He said his deputies will use their training only when they come across illegal immigrants in the regular course of their work. The efforts won't detract from investigating violence, drugs and other crimes, Arpaio said.

Kris Kobach, law professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City and an advocate of expanding local immigration efforts, is now serving as adviser to the sheriff's office and will help instruct deputies through video training.

When 100 deputies from the sheriff's office received federal immigration training in early 2007 under a special program, the federal government paid the training costs. Arpaio wouldn't provide an estimate of what his latest training effort will cost his office, which had $17 million cut from its current budget.

Kobach is "being paid by another fund" and is providing assistance to the county attorney's office, Arpaio said.

"Two birds with one stone, we are killing," he said. "I'm not going to go into it."