Translated material
Trump pardons former sheriff who persecuted migrants and called Obama's birth certificate a fraud
US President Donald Trump pardoned 85-year-old Joe Arpaio, a former sheriff from Arizona who was found guilty of contempt of court.
Arpaio was charged after he ignored a court order to detain people on the mere suspicion that they were illegal immigrants.
The ruling on Arpaio's guilt was handed down on 31 July. At the same time, he was not sentenced - this was planned to be done at a meeting on October 5. The former sheriff faced up to six months in prison.
In announcing a pardon for Arpaio, Trump called him an American patriot who kept Arizona safe.
Pardoning Arpaio […] would further anger the president's opponents and likely worsen the president's already strained relationship with the judiciary, which he has repeatedly criticized.
- Joe Arpaio, during his service in Arizona, detained people whom he considered illegal immigrants, although there were no other suspicions against them. Opponents of the sheriff accused him of racism.
- In 2012, Arpaio issued a statement that Barack Obama's birth certificate was a fake. He later repeated this accusation, referring to the results of an investigation allegedly carried out over a period of five years.
- The fight against illegal immigration is one of the main points of Donald Trump's program, with which he won the presidential election.
- In January 2017, Trump issued an executive order banning citizens of seven Muslim countries—Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya, and Somalia—from entering the United States. This decision caused mass protests in the United States. The decree was suspended by the court.