There’s really no conceivable reason for Think Progress to stick by their intial reporting that Joe Arpaio’s deputies arrested a six-year-old during a raid on human traffickers now that the anti–Joe Arpaio Phoenix New Times has chimed in:

Joe Arpaio and MCSO Did Not Arrest a 6-Year-Old

An excerpt:

Despite what you may have heard — and how Joe Arpaio-ish it sounds — Maricopa County Sheriff’s deputies did not arrest a 6-year-old on Friday.MCSO spokesman Chris Hegstrom tells New Times deputies arrested 16 people during a human-smuggling operation, but the 6-year-old found in the van wasn’t one of them.

The mystery of the 6-year-old is far from over. The Arizona Republic reports:

A 6-year-old child taken into custody by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office as part of a human-smuggling investigation is under the care of a faith-based social-services organization, the El Salvador Consulate said.
The child, whose name has not been released, was picked up on Friday by deputies along with 16 others suspected of being in the country illegally. The child was unaccompanied and others in the group claimed to know nothing about her, sheriff’s officials said.
Officials initially believed the girl was from El Salvador, based on her statements to deputies. Sheriff’s officials transferred custody of the girl to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
José Joaquin Chacon,El Salvador’s consulate general in Phoenix, said an investigation found the child was not from El Salvador, but Mexico.
Chacon said consulate officials inquiring into the child’s origin found she was in the care of a faith-based social-services group. Officials from the organization said that without a name, she was not able to confirm the girl was in her group’s care.
Socorro Cordova, a spokeswoman for the consul general of Mexico, was not able to confirm the girl’s current location.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, released a statement saying only that the child was handed over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Kenneth Wolfe, a spokesman for the Office of Refugee Resettlement, would not comment on the case.

So how does a six-year-old girl, in the custody of a faith-based organization in Mexico end up in Arizona? That’s the part of the story that needs to be focused on, not Think Progress’s attempt to score cheap political points.