House Democrats and a nonpartisan legal advocacy group are both pushing the federal government to challenge President Donald Trump’s pardon of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted last month of flouting a judge’s order to end his practice of racially profiling Latinos.
Trump announced last week that he would pardon Arpaio, who was one of the president’s biggest supporters on the campaign trail and who faced a maximum penalty of six months in jail for contempt of court.
Over Arpaio’s 24-year career as sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, he frequently detained Latinos under the suspicion that they were undocumented immigrants, with no evidence that they had committed any crimes, and established a detention center called Tent City, which he compared favorably to a Nazi concentration camp.
Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and 16 other House Democrats sent a letter Wednesday to Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, asking him to a call a hearing on the pardon, which they called “a gross injustice.”
“The pardon sends an unequivocal message that institutionalized racial profiling as practiced by Sheriff Arpaio is acceptable,” the representatives wrote. “The pardon is disrespectful to the rule of law in general and to the federal courts in particular; and the president issued the pardon in complete absence of any advisory role by the Department of Justice.”
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