Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada said he will not seek reelection and will retire this year after 53 years in law enforcement.
Estrada, 77, was sworn into elected office in 1993 and was reelected seven times. Before running for county sheriff, he worked his way up the ranks at the Nogales Police Department, retiring as captain in 1991.
He has also been an active volunteer with Nogales Rotary, United Way of Santa Cruz County, the Boys and Girls Club, Way of the Heart Promotora Institute and the Nogales Elks Lodge.
He said he decided not to seek reelection after he and his family agreed he’s done enough for the Santa Cruz County community.
Estrada was born in Nogales, Sonora, in 1943 and immigrated to Nogales, Arizona, with his mother and siblings in 1944, he said.
“For a humble little Mexican boy that wasn’t sure what my future was going to be, all of a sudden all these doors started opening for me,” Estrada said.
One of his greatest accomplishments as sheriff was moving the department and county jail to a new building, he said.
When he first got elected, the Sheriff’s Office and county jail were next to a riverbed, and when it flooded the jail was isolated from emergency services, he said.
In 2011, the Arizona Daily Star wrote that the biggest reason for the move was the overcrowding at the old jail, which was built for 52 inmates in 1974. In 2010, it housed up to 120 inmates.
In 2011, the department and jail were moved into the $48 million Tony Estrada Law Enforcement Center, according to Star archives. Voters approved a half-cent sales tax in 2005 to pay for the building.
As a border county sheriff, Estrada said he had the opportunity to dispel the perception some people have of high crime in border towns.
He said he made it a point to show people that, like most cities, those in Santa Cruz County deal mostly with low-level crimes, not what people might assume is rampant near the border — kidnappings, home invasions, shootings.
As a Democrat, Estrada sometimes clashed with the federal government’s decisions to reinforce the border. He condemned the Trump administration for separating undocumented immigrant families at the border, and opposed the concertina barbed wire recently placed along the border wall.
Despite sometimes being criticized for defending immigrants despite their legal status, Estrada said he will never apologize for showing empathy and compassion toward those less fortunate.
He said he feels grateful and fortunate to have had the support of the community, his law enforcement family and his family throughout his career.
“Somebody decided for some reason to give me a chance to have a voice and I think I’ve used it wisely,” he said.
