These days, the positions he embraces — more agents on the border, more power to local police agencies to enforce federal immigration law — are emanating from the Oval Office. Mr. Arpaio is on the sidelines, alone but for a tight circle of friends as he waits to go on trial next month on charges he defied a federal judge’s order to stop singling out Latinos for traffic stops.

“I get a few phone calls — where is everybody?” Mr. Arpaio said resentfully one recent Friday, dressed in a black suit, a silver pin of a Glock pistol on his tie.

He talked for three hours about the job he used to have, attributing his ouster to President Barack Obama, as well as the federal judge who charged him with criminal contempt of court three weeks before the general election, and the voters who turned their backs on him.

“I’ll tell you what’s sad,” he said. “You know, you would think some politicians — I don’t even want to talk which ones, I won’t say who, maybe county officials — you would think they would say something that I did nice in 24 years. I think I did something nice in 24 years.”

Mr. Arpaio’s entry into civilian life after decades in law enforcement — he began his career in 1954, as a police officer in Washington — was the end of an era in Arizona, whose tough anti-immigrant law earned it a reputation as a caldron of intolerance.

The state has worked hard to shake off its tainted image. Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, barely mentions the words “illegal immigration” in public pronouncements these days, and when he talks about the border, he focuses more on the illegal drugs coming across than the people. There is also a transformation underway in the Republican-led State Legislature, which has been infused with a new crop of Democratic lawmakers whose introduction to politics happened through activism against Mr. Arpaio.