Vice President Pence’s dog whistle embrace of Joe Arpaio will not be forgotten by the Latino community
By Janet Murguía, UnidosUS President and CEO
After yet another week of chaos in the Trump administration, it’s important not to overlook that there’s one area where this otherwise free-for-all administration has been consistent and laser-focused. And that is in its continued attack on the Latino community.
One of last week’s examples came from Vice President Mike Pence. Speaking at a rally in Tempe, Arizona, Pence welcomed Sheriff Joe Arpaio — notorious recipient of President Trump’s first presidential pardon — by saying that he was “honored” to have Arpaio there because he is “a tireless champion of the rule of law.”
Cue my spit take. And where to begin? First, despite the pardon, Arpaio is still a convicted felon. And he was convicted last year of criminal contempt of a court order that included attempts by his office to destroy evidence. The court order the judge ruled, and Arpaio willfully violated, was to stop racially profiling Latinos.
The court had found in 2011 that “under Arpaio’s leadership, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s office routinely targeted Latino drivers and passengers for pretextual traffic stops aimed at detecting violations of federal immigration law.” In fact, Latinos were nine times more likely to be pulled over than other drivers. The court found that this was in violation of the Constitution, specifically the Fourth and 14th Amendments. But in 2013, the court found that Arpaio had thumbed his nose at the ruling and had kept profiling for almost two years after the decision.
Arpaio’s continual refusal to cooperate with the court eventually resulted in his contempt conviction in July 2017 that Trump promptly pardoned him for the very next month. This pardon came about despite the fact that Arpaio had yet to be sentenced. And to this day, he has never shown any concern or remorse and is completely unrepentant for his criminal conduct and his treatment of Latinos.
And rest assured that, despite his claim that he is just a fierce opponent of illegal immigration, this is about Hispanics. In 2009, he told a TV reporter, “They hate me, the Latino community, because they’re afraid they’re going to be arrested. And they’re leaving so I think we’re doing something good.” In 2012, he asked a reporter from Rolling Stone if he “wants to see the tent where all the Mexicans are?” referring to the infamous Tent City jail that Arpaio himself has boasted was a “concentration camp.” The federal investigation of Tent City found that guards there had referred to detainees as “wetbacks,” “stupid Mexicans,” and other unprintable slurs.
Arpaio’s war on Latinos won him a national following and the diehard support of the Trump administration, but it also led to the right-of-center Goldwater Institute’s finding that Arpaio “had fallen seriously short” of his actual mission to fight crime and protect the public safety. While he was staging immigration raids for the media, Arpaio allowed hundreds of sex crimes, whose victims were children as young as two years old, to go uninvestigated. And Arpaio’s lawless reign has so far cost the people of Maricopa county $140 million in litigation and settlements. And thanks to a ruling this week by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the county will still be liable for his antics in the future.
This is just a small sampling of why what Pence said is disgraceful and nauseating. There are only two explanations for Pence’s embrace of Arpaio — either he doesn’t know that Arpaio is a serial violator of the rule of law, or he doesn’t care.
It is just one more example that the Trump administration likely believes that rule of law just does not apply when it comes to the rights of Latinos in this country.
