Today is the last day to sign a petition to recall Joe Arpaio, the controversial anti-immigration sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz. A federal judge ruled late last week that Arpaio's office engaged in illegal racial profiling of Hispanics and ordered an immediate end to those policies.

Proponents of the recall must present 335,000 Maricopa County voter signatures by 4:00 p.m. today. Organizers are asking last-minute signers to bring their signed petitions to the recall office in Phoenix.

"We can't allow the sheriff to stay in office four more years," said recall campaign manager Lilia Alvarez.

"We believe Sheriff Arpaio has failed to fulfill his duties as Maricopa County Sheriff. We believe Sheriff Arpaio has violated our trust and our dignity as citizens because too many people have suffered as a result of Sheriff Arpaio's abusive practices and policies. We believe business owners should not be unfairly harassed, workers unlawfully detained and families unjustly torn apart from raids that have nothing to do with public safety," says the recall petition circulated by Respect Arizona, the official organization behind the recall effort.

Lawsuits against Arpaio and the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office have cost taxpayers more than $25 million, and serious crimes have gone uninvestigated because Arpaio prioritizes immigration patrols.

The recall effort is struggling to meet its goal. Five weeks ago organizers said they had 200,000 signatures on hand, but they have been working mostly with unpaid volunteers on a tight budget.

The effort received a boost last Friday when U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow ruled that Arpaio had a policy of racial profiling that violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights of local residents.

"In an immigration enforcement context, the MCSO did not believe that it constituted racial profiling to consider race as one factor among others in making law enforcement decisions. Its written operational plans and policy descriptions confirmed that in the context of immigration enforcement, the MCSO could consider race as one factor among others," Snow wrote. In addition, "The MCSO considered Latino ancestry as one factor among others in choosing the location for saturation patrols."

In fact, Arpaio directed his deputies to specifically target people who looked Hispanic or had darker skin. "The evidence demonstrates that the MCSO specifically equated being a Hispanic or Mexican (as opposed to Caucasian or African-American) day laborer with being an unauthorized alien. In his testimony Sheriff Arpaio acknowledged that he would not investigate Caucasians for immigration compliance because it would not have occurred to him that they were in the country without authorization. Chief Sands could not identify a single instance in which the MCSO arrested a day laborer who was not Hispanic on any charge," wrote Judge Snow.

A 2007 effort to recall Arpaio failed, and if this one follows suit, he will remain in office until at least 2012, when he will be up for reelection to another four-year term.