There absolutely are people the President should pardon in Arizona but it’s not the recently convicted Sheriff in Maricopa County. It’s victims of Sheriff Arpaio’s racial profiling like me who are still paying the price.
I have a felony on my record just for working.
I came to the United States from Mexico when I was three years old and grew up like any other kid in Arizona. I didn’t find out that I was undocumented until I was 16. When all my friends started getting drivers licenses, I found out I didn’t have a social security number that would let me do the same.
Missing that one document would hurt me again and again. In 2010 I graduated from high school and wanted to study to be a nurse but with Arizona universities charging people like me out-of-state rates and no way to be authorized to work, I babysat and helped my mom around the house.
Then in 2012 I heard about the deferred action for childhood arrival program that would give young people like me the opportunity to work and be freer from the fear of deportation. Except it cost $465, money my family didn’t have, to apply.
I looked for countless jobs until I finally got hired at a grocery store. Three days a week. $7 dollars an hour. It took me two months but I saved what I needed to finally afford to send in my application.
Except one day right before my lunch break, Arpaio’s Sheriff’s entered the store. They weren’t looking for me but that didn’t stop them from interrogating me, arresting me, and keeping me in their jail for sixty days while I awaited a trial that resulted in me being convicted of a felony and turned over to immigration agents for deportation.
Because of a local group, Puente Arizona, and the work of my community I’m still here. But because of Arpaio’s profiling and campaign against our families I have this extra mark against me now.
So when President Trump says Arpaio is a “great American patriot” who has “done a lot in the fight against illegal immigration,” he’s talking about what he’s done to people like me.
So when President Trump says Arpaio is a “great American patriot” who has “done a lot in the fight against illegal immigration,” he’s talking about what he’s done to people like me. He’s talking about what he’s done to families like Katherine Figueroa who at age 9 watched her own parents arrested in a raid on a carwash on live television. He’s talking about Marty Atencio who Arpaio’s Sheriffs beat to death in a jail cell. Just like when he says there are “very fine people on both sides” of the protests in Charlottesville, he’s talking about nazis.
The previous Department of Justice said that Arpaio is the “most egregious case of racial profiling” investigators had ever witnessed. A judge found Arpaio guilty of continuing that profiling in contempt of court orders to stop. And he’s actually guilty of much worse.
Pardoning Arpaio would be a presidential endorsement of his racism and his flaunting of the law in pursuit of it. Whereas pardoning Arpaio’s victims would actually mean having a heart and correcting a wrong.
But Trump hasn’t said he’s ‘seriously considering’ a case like mine because a man who can’t see the wrong in defending the confederacy is able to look the other way when racist Sheriffs get caught for their crimes. In refusing to condemn the nazis of Charlottesville and in considering a pardon for Arpaio, I think Trump is showing what it means to him to be a “patriot.” If I’m right, the only thing that’s missing is putting tiki torches on the White House’s front lawn. If I’m wrong, then can I look forward to a pardon?
Noemi Romero grew up in Arizona and is now an immigrant rights advocate with the Puente Human Rights Movement in Phoenix, AZ.