Grijalva: Arpaio pardon would show Trump condones racial profiling

Thousands of protesters gathered outside the Phoenix Convention Center Tuesday night ahead of a speech by President Donald Trump, his first political event since the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va.

It comes at a politically turbulent time for the president.

Before he became sheriff, Arpaio served in the US Army and then was a police officer, a federal narcotics agent and became head of the Drug Enforcement Administration for Arizona, according to his now-removed sheriff’s site bio. Placentia resident Mike Tucker said his mother is mad that he came, especially after the president’s controversial comments about Charlottesville that suggested there were “good people” on both sides of the violent protests there.

City of Phoenix officials echoed plans for extra safety measures in the area surrounding the convention center in a Monday press conference.

“I am disappointed that President Trump has chosen to hold a campaign rally as our nation is still healing from the tragic events in Charlottesville”, Stanton said in a statement released on Twitter.

He expressed his concerns about the timing and location of Trump’s rally in a column for the Washington Post, and told a meeting of ASU Young Democrats that “now ain’t the right time” for the rally. At least for a day, the possibility of a Trump pardon is focusing on someone else: Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff famous in some quarters and infamous in others for his aggressive enforcement of immigration laws by methods including racial profiling. His 2020 re-election campaign pays for and organizes the events, carefully screening attendees.

Even though 2020 is far in the future, Donald Trump has never stopped holding campaign rallies.

At the downtown Phoenix Convention Center at 7pm, Trump will address roughly 29,000 supporters.

Arpaio told NBC News “I don’t know” if Trump will pardon him.

Outside the Convention Center, opponents and Democratic leaders plan protests and marches created to highlight opposition to Trump’s immigration policies, he remarks last week about an August 12 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and his possible plans to pardon former Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Trump has said he’s considering the pardon, and Arpaio has said he would accept a pardon but would not ask for one.

Former Maricopa County Sheriff #Joe Arpaio has been convicted of contempt of court after ignoring rules about profiling those his department arrested.

Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, a conservative, has been a frequent target of Trump’s wrath.

Arpaio, 85, will be sentenced this fall for defying a judge’s 2011 order demanding that he stop sanctioning traffic stops carried out on the basis of whether vehicle occupants appeared to be illegal immigrants.

Garcia says he is encouraging all protesters to be peaceful and said he expects a large police presence, including the Secret Service.

Almost a dozen protests of the rally were planned by various immigrant rights, anti-fascist, and civil rights groups. Trump supporters shouted, “Build that wall!”