Washington (AFP) – Arizona’s former sheriff Joe Arpaio pursued undocumented immigrants so zealously that the tough-talking lawman eventually ran afoul of the law himself.
Arpaio, 85, was convicted last month of criminal contempt of court charges for violating an order that he refrain from detaining illegal immigrants, which the courts said was the job of federal authorities.
He may be spared prison, however, if — as some political observers predict — President Donald Trump grants him a pardon during a visit on Tuesday to the southwestern US state.
Arpaio is due to be sentenced in October for violating a 2011 order to halt traffic stops targeting suspected unauthorized immigrant.
Trump is traveling to Arizona on Tuesday for an evening pep rally at the downtown Phoenix Convention Center, and speculation is rife that he might use the occasion to pardon his old friend Arpaio — one of the earliest and most ardent backers of what seemed at the time to be a longshot presidential bid by the billionaire businessman.
Coincidentally, Arpaio shares a birthday with Trump — June 14, a day patriotic Americans celebrate as “Flag Day.” The Republican president, however, is 14 years younger than Arpaio.
– No welcome mat –
Arpaio seems like a character out of a spaghetti western, with his rough-hewn features and gruff demeanor.
The Italian-American lawman put Maricopa County, Arizona on the map as one of the least welcoming places for a Hispanic immigrant in the United States — particularly if you ended up being arrested.
He was known to make detainees wear pink underwear to humiliate them, and housed them in tent camps surrounded by barbed wire, in the scorching Arizona desert.
Arpaio himself once likened the encampment to a concentration camp, although he later backed away from that remark.
He also boasted about serving inmates the cheapest meals in the United States: prison slop sometimes unrecognizable as food, costing just 15 or 20 US cents per meal to prepare.
About a third of Arizona’s 6.6 million residents were not born in the United States. There are an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants in the southwestern state, which borders Mexico.
A group of Hispanic drivers sued Arpaio in a case that went to trial last year, accusing his officers of using race to determine which motorists to stop.
The judge, in his ruling against Arpaio, said the evidence demonstrated that Arpaio and the sheriff’s department “equated being a Hispanic or Mexican… day laborer with being an unauthorized alien.”
– Trump pardon? –
Still, Arizona residents seemed to approve of his heavy-handed tactics, electing him Maricopa sheriff in 1992, and then repeatedly returning him to office until last year.
He lost re-election to the post during November’s election, amid accusations of corruption and abuse.
“I am seriously considering a pardon for Sheriff Arpaio,” Trump told Fox News in comments posted earlier this month.
“He has done a lot in the fight against illegal immigration. He’s a great American patriot and I hate to see what has happened to him.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, a leading civil rights group, said Trump’s idea of pardoning Arpaio would be tantamount to promoting racism.
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