After weeks of speculation, on Friday night President Donald Trump officially pardoned former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a political ally who was convicted last month for criminal contempt for disregarding a court order against his “tough” practices regarding illegal immigrants.
The pardon did not come as a surprise. In his highly anticipated rally in Phoenix on Tuesday night, Trump made clear to the 8,000 or so attendees that a pardon was coming soon.
“I won’t do it tonight because I don’t want to cause any controversy,” he said, adding, “I’ll make a prediction: I think he’s going to be just fine.”
Trump and Arpaio have both expressed support for each other in the past, particularly on the issue of illegal immigration, and it was the sheriff’s aggressive stance on the issue that resulted in his conviction.
Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt on July 31 for what U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton said was a willful disregard of a court order to stop his controversial policing practices aimed at illegal immigrants. Judge G. Murray Snow had previously ruled that Arpaio’s policy of detaining individuals solely on the suspicion they were illegal immigrants constituted “racial profiling” and thus was unconstitutional. After Arpaio was ordered to cease the “immigration roundups,” Judge Bolton said he deliberately defied the order for at least 17 months and slapped him with a criminal contempt conviction that carried up to six months of confinement.
Arpaio’s defense maintained that Judge Snow’s order was unclear and that the sheriff had no “willful intent” to defy the injunction.
Even before Trump issued the official pardon, illegal immigrant and civil rights activists were protesting. One of those groups was the ACLU, who tweeted directly at Trump on Tuesday night that Arpaio “was not ‘just doing his job.’ He was violating the Constitution and discriminating against Latinos.”
But none of that matters now because Arpaio has just been pardoned by the country’s chief law enforcement officer.