Critics said the decision amounted to presidential approval of racism by eliminating the conviction of a law officer who the courts said had used immigration patrols to racially profile Latinos.

Democrats condemned the president’s decision, which was made public by the White House on Friday night as Hurricane Harvey churned toward the Texas coast. Some Republicans praised the move, and others criticized it, but most remained silent about a decision that further entangles the party in racial controversy.

NEW YORK — President Trump’s end-of-the-week pardon of former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, a campaign supporter who shares Trump’s hard-line views on immigration, touched off a political outcry that did not abate Saturday.


They said that while it was within Trump’s constitutional power, it overturned efforts to hold Arpaio accountable.

‘‘Pardoning Joe Arpaio is a slap in the face to the people of Maricopa County, especially the Latino community and those he victimized as he systematically and illegally violated their civil rights,’’ Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton said.

Last month, a federal judge found Arpaio, a former Arizona sheriff, guilty of criminal contempt for defying a court order to stop detaining immigrants based solely on the suspicion that they were in the country illegally.

The order had been issued in a lawsuit that accused the sheriff’s office of violating the Constitution by using racial profiling to jail Latinos. Arpaio had faced a sentence of up to six months in jail.

Trump thus used his constitutional power to block a federal judge’s effort to enforce the Constitution. Legal analysts said they found this to be the most troubling aspect of the pardon, given that it excused the lawlessness of an official who had sworn to defend the constitutional structure.

Noah Feldman, a law professor at Harvard, argued before the pardon was issued that such a move “would express presidential contempt for the Constitution.”


“Arpaio didn’t just violate a law passed by Congress,” Feldman wrote on Bloomberg View. “His actions defied the Constitution itself, the bedrock of the entire system of government.” By saying Arpaio’s offense was forgivable, Feldman added, Trump threatens “the very structure on which his right to pardon is based.”

It was the first act of outright defiance against the judiciary by a president who has not been shy about criticizing federal judges who ruled against his businesses and policies. But while the move may have been unusual, there is nothing in the text of the Constitution’s pardons clause to suggest that he exceeded his authority.

Jesse Lehrich, a spokesman for Organizing for Action, the political group that grew out of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, said the pardon “signals a disturbing tolerance for those who engage in bigotry.”

He added: “It sends an unsettling message to immigrants across the country. And it’s a repudiation of the rule of law.’’

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, echoed Lehrich’s sentiment that Trump had sent a poor message about living by the rule of law. The state’s other Republican senator, Jeff Flake, who has been attacked by Trump and who is facing a potential primary challenge, was more muted.

“Regarding the Arpaio pardon, I would have preferred that the President honor the judicial process and let it take its course,” Republican Senator Jeff Flake wrote on Twitter.

Arpaio had become a symbol of anti-immigrant sentiment, a staple of cable television for his roundups of people suspected of being in the country illegally in the heavily Latino state.


Representative Trent Franks, another Arizona Republican, said he saw the pardon as a just end to the saga of Arpaio’s legal entanglements, which included defying a court order intended to halt racial profiling of Latinos.

“The president did the right thing — Joe Arpaio lived an honorable life serving our country, and he deserves an honorable retirement,” Franks posted on Twitter.

David Axelrod, who was a senior adviser to Obama in the White House, saw a different motive at play. Trump, he argued, was sending a signal after removing his chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, a nationalist who is an icon among segments of the president’s base.

“I think this was a nod to the base, post-Bannon, that he’s still with them,” Axelrod said.

Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist who advised the main super PAC supporting Hillary Clinton in 2016, suggested that Trump was offering a different type of signal — one to people who might be approached by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, as well as possible obstruction of justice by the president when he fired the FBI director, James B. Comey.

“The Arpaio pardon was awful in and of itself, but I also think it was a signal to the targets of the Mueller investigation that ‘I got your back,’” Begala said on Bill Maher’s HBO program Friday night.