President Donald Trump announced Friday evening that he is pardoning controversial former sheriff Joe Arpaio, who had been convicted of criminal contempt.
In a statement, Trump called Arpaio a “worthy candidate” for a presidential pardon and said his life exemplifies “selfless public service.”
On July 31, Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt of court after he was deemed to have deliberately ignored a federal judge’s order to stop detaining people solely on the belief that they were in the country illegally, per USA Today. Arpaio, the sheriff of Mericopa County, Arizona, which includes Phoenix, and his deputies continued to do so for 17 months after the judge’s order, in a move that many accused of being racial profiling.
The White House statement Friday did not mention Arpaio’s conviction, merely saying that he “continued his life’s work of protecting the public from the scourges of crime and illegal immigration” while sheriff.
Arpaio has also been accused of other misdeeds, with a judge ruling in 2008 and 2010 that jails in Maricopa County did not meet constitutional standards for medical care, quality of food and living quarters for inmates, per the Arizona Republic. The Department of Justice also investigated Arpaio for potential abuse of power, though charges were never filed, per the New York Times.
According to the Associated Press, Arpaio has also been accused of forcing inmates to live in outdoor tents in triple-digit heat and wear pink underwear.
Still, Arpaio’s hard-line stance on immigration matched up well with Trump’s rhetoric on immigration and proposal to build a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, and Arpaio specifically cited immigration as a central issue when he endorsed Trump in January 2016, per CBS News.
On Tuesday, during a rally in Phoenix, Arizona, Trump hinted that he would pardon Arpaio, saying he would be “just fine.”
“I won’t do it tonight because I don’t want to cause any controversy,” the president said, after asking, “Was Sheriff Joe convicted for doing his job?”
Arpaio had been facing sentencing in October, per the Washington Post. He faced up to six months in prison. Speaking with NBC News, Arpaio said he was “very humbled” by Trump’s pardon and thanked him for “standing by me and standing by law enforcement.”
In a tweet more than an hour after the pardon was announced, Trump called Arpaio an “American patriot.”
In his own tweet, Arpaio thanked Trump again and called his conviction a “political witch hunt by holdovers in the Obama justice department.”