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Following his “raucous, racist, hate-filled rally” in Arizona last night, CNN’s Kaitlyn Collins reports that the White House has prepared talking points to excuse Donald Trump’s imminent pardon of convicted criminal Joe Arpaio, “including one about how Arpaio has served his country for 50 years.” That is, until he was kicked out of office by Maricopa County taxpayers who were sick of shelling out millions of dollars to cover the former sheriff’s legal fees.
No matter how much Trump tries to whitewash Arpaio’s criminal behavior—"so was Sheriff Joe convicted for doing his job?" Trump asked the audience last night—the fact remains he was convicted by the criminal justice system for intentionally disobeying a federal judge’s order to stop racially profiling brown drivers, a practice that left hundreds of sex crimes uninvestigated because Arpaio and his deputies were too busy raiding workplaces to arrest immigrants parents trying to support their families. That’s who Trump may reserve his first presidential pardon for.
“For an elected sheriff to decide that he need not heed a court order is unacceptable, both as a matter of law and as an example for the public,” notes an editorial from the Los Angeles Times. “If a sheriff can ignore a federal judge, why should anyone else obey such orders?”
The Los Angeles Times:
He’s telling America that it’s permissible for the government to violate our basic civil rights simply because a sheriff wraps a “tough on crime” bow around it. Some believe that a pardon would send a message to other sheriffs around the nation whose cooperation the government seeks in its crackdown on immigrants in the country illegally, namely, that the president will support them in any potential court showdowns over immigration. But law enforcement officials cannot disregard a court order just because they — and the president — disagree with the policy at hand. And on a pragmatic level, illegal detentions, which violate the 4th Amendment, can lead to lawsuits and substantial civil damages that taxpayers ultimately have to cover — and for which there is no presidential pardon.
“The message Trump really sends here is that the president of the United States doesn’t think court orders need to be respected.” Just as importantly, it’s a presidential endorsement of racist practices that were intentionally targeted at Latinos and immigrants with one goal in mind: to strike fear and terror. More from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU):
Arpaio is best known for establishing Tent City, a sprawling, outdoor detention center which he once positively compared to a “concentration camp.” Temperatures in Tent City, which is surrounded by an electrocuted fence, could reach up to 141 degrees; one detainee said life in Tent City felt “like you are in a furnace.” People held there were primarily Latinos — he called it “the tent where all the Mexicans are” — and were put into chain gangs and subjected to humiliating practices like public parades.
Women of color in Arpaio’s jails were particularly mistreated. The Justice Department discovered cases where Latina detainees were “denied basic sanitary items” and were “forced to remain with sheets or pants soiled from menstruation” or were put into “solitary confinement for extended periods of time because of their inability to understand and thus follow a command given in English.”
“A pardon of Sheriff Arpaio by President Trump is an official endorsement of racism and white supremacy,” said Puente Arizona, an immigrant rights group, and a presidential pardon that only 21 percent of Arizonans approve of. To pardon Arpaio "would be devastating for our community, because it would send a very strong message that … targeting people based on their race and treating them differently because of their ethnicity are acceptable behaviors," said state Sen. Martín Quezada.
"This should be the end of an ugly chapter in Arizona history. To have [Arpaio] finally be held accountable for the harm he caused all these years, and then to have the president to come in and alter that outcome—we can't stand by and let that happen."