Trump Pardons Joe Arpaio, Who Became Face of Crackdown on Illegal Immigration<br />WASHINGTON — President Trump on Friday pardoned Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff whose aggressive efforts to hunt down<br />and detain undocumented immigrants made him a national symbol of the divisive politics of immigration and earned him a criminal contempt conviction.<br />“I won’t do it tonight because I don’t want to cause any controversy,” the president said Tuesday night<br />at a campaign-style rally in Phoenix, after asking, “Was Sheriff Joe convicted for doing his job?”<br />“I’ll make a prediction: I think he’s going to be just fine,” Mr. Trump said.<br />In a two-paragraph statement, the White House said<br />that Mr. Arpaio gave “years of admirable service to our nation” and called him a “worthy candidate for a presidential pardon.”<br />Mr. Trump called Mr. Arpaio “an American patriot” in a tweet later Friday.<br />In his own tweets, Mr. Arpaio thanked Mr. Trump and called his conviction “a political witch hunt by holdovers in the Obama justice department.” He also pointed his supporters to a website<br />that was accepting donations to help him pay off his legal fees.<br />Kelli Ward, a former Arizona state senator who is challenging Senator Jeff Flake in a Republican primary for his seat in<br />2018, called Mr. Arpaio “a patriot who did the job the Feds refused to do.” Mr. Trump has endorsed Ms. Ward’s candidacy.
