Sheriff Joe Arpaio attends a rally by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, October 4, 2016, in Prescott Valley, Arizona. (Photo credit: ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)
Sheriff Joe Arpaio attends a rally past Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Oct 4, 2016, in Prescott Valley, Arizona. (Photo credit: ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

Joe Arpaio, the former Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff previously convicted of antipathy of court, wants his erstwhile job dorsum.

"On this day, August 25, 2019, after consultation and approving from my wife of 61 years, Ava, I have decided to run to be reelected Sheriff," he said in a statement. "Watch out world! We are back!"

Arpaio was pardoned by President Donald Trump in August 2017. He is at present running for the same part he used to illegally target and jail Latinx people in an abusive "tent city" that he himself once described as a "concentration camp."

Over the course of 20 years, detainees in the military camp were left to swelter in dangerous temperatures exceeding 120 degrees Fahrenheit during the summertime. During the winter, inmates were exposed to the elements and not immune to article of clothing insulated clothing. People detained in the tent metropolis told reporters of broken fans and a lack of cold water; they said it became so hot, their shoes melted. The camps were surrounded by electrical fences.

"I was in the tents when we hit 120 [degrees]," one sometime inmate, Francisco Chairez, wrote for The Washington Post in August 2017. "It was incommunicable to stay absurd in the oppressive heat. Everyone would strip down to their underwear. There was no cold h2o, only water from vending machines; and somewhen, the machines would run out. People would faint; some had heatstroke. That summer, ambulances came nearly three times. One man died in his bed."

Arpaio made it a practice to humiliate the detainees at the facility. In 2009, he paraded hundreds of Latinx immigrant detainees picked upwards on not-violent offenses through the city streets from the county jail to the tent city.

In 2008, the Justice Department launched an investigation into claims that Arpaio had illegally used racial profiling to detain Latinx people. A 2011 written report past the department's Ceremonious Rights Partitioning institute Arpaio's deputies frequently used racist language when discussing Latinx inmates. The 22-page document also outlined how Arpaio's office had engaged in "unconstitutional policing" and established a "pervasive culture of discriminatory bias against Latinos" extending to the "highest levels of the bureau."

Arpaio denied the racial profiling charges, though the Maricopa County board of supervisors afterward voted to settle portions of the DOJ's subsequent lawsuit confronting the sheriff's part over the matter.

In December 2014, a federal approximate wrote to Arpaio, who was refusing to comply with a previous courtroom guild to terminate racially profiling, warning him that he faced possible contempt of court charges. In March 2015, Arpaio admitted to violating that courtroom club, and in October 2016, following an investigation, federal prosecutors announced plans to charge him with criminal contempt of court.

Arpaio was found guilty of contempt in July 2017. Two months later, while facing a sentence of up to vi months in jail, he received a presidential pardon from Trump.

Arpaio's history of alleged corruption were chronicled through exhaustive investigative reporting by a number of outlets, including The Phoenix New Times, which won a $3.75 million settlement later on the sheriff arrested i of its reporters for roofing him.

He was apparently a profoundly ineffective sheriff: A 2011 investigative report alleged that Arpaio's office had failed to investigate over 400 declared sexual assault cases reported to his office, including dozens of child molestations between 2005 and 2007 lone.

Between 1996 and 2015, the New Times reported, at to the lowest degree 39 people hanged themselves in Arpaio'due south jails. Of the about 160 people who died in jail under his watch, 24% committed suicide, while dozens of others died without explanation.

In 2012, the same day President Barack Obama announced Deferred Activity for Babyhood Arrivals, Arpaio arrested a 6-year-sometime child during an clearing sweep.

Arpaio is also a supporter of Trump's racist "birtherism" conspiracy theory, which claims that Obama was non born in the U.s., merely forged his nascency certificate in order to become president.

Arpaio's targeted, brutal handling of immigrants and Latinx Americans has notable parallels to the manner the Trump administration has treated immigrants in federal detention centers. Among other things, the administration has forcibly separated families, placing adults, children, and infants in "inhumane" and overcrowded facilities without bones resources like beds, toothpase, or soap.