NEW YORK –  GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization, released the following background information on former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio in response to reports he is running for U.S. Senate in Arizona.

Arpaio, who served as sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona for 24 years, was found guilty of issuing racist, anti-immigrant policies after a judge ordered him to stop targeting immigrants for traffic stops and detaining undocumented immigrants without a legal basis. Arpaio also gained national attention for his inhumane Tent City jail, which he boasted was a “concentration camp.” This past August, President Trump sparked outrage after pardoning Arpaio from his federal charge of criminal contempt over his refusal to end unconstitutional immigration patrols in Arizona.

According to the Williams Institute, an estimated 267,000 adult undocumented immigrants (Latinx, Black, Asian, and Muslim) identify as LGBTQ. Arpaio’s anti-immigrant ideology has created an environment in Arizona that increased the profiling, deportation, and detention of immigrants, including LGBTQ immigrants. Transgender immigrants are often disproportionately detained in immigration centers and suffer a higher rate of abuse.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION: Former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Documented Racist and Anti-Immigration Record

• Bragged that he had built a concentration camp. “I already have a concentration camp…It’s called tent city.”
   
• Found guilty of criminal contempt of court for his willful defiance of “orders to stop detaining undocumented immigrants without legal basis.”
   
• Engaged in racial profiling in order to detain undocumented immigrants.
   
• Insisted President Obama’s birth certificate is forged and says he will not give up trying to prove it.
   
• Investigations show Arpaio and his deputies “failed to investigate or conducted only the sketchiest of inquiries into hundreds of sex crimes between 2005 and 2007, investigations by Arizona law enforcement agencies have shown. Many of those cases involved molested children.”
   
• Branded by The New York Times Editorial Board as “America’s Worst Sheriff.”