The ACLU, which has said an Arpaio pardon would amount to an "official presidential endorsement of racism," is circulating a petition against such a move; more than 100,000 have added their names so far. Human Rights Watch also is discouraging a pardon. But it was Vanita Gupta, the head of the DOJ's civil right division under President Obama and now president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, who put the finest point on it, saying in a statement, "If President Trump uses his power to pardon a discredited law enforcement official who persistently engaged in illegal racial profiling of the Latino community, it will not be a dog whistle to the so-called 'alt right' and white supremacists, but a bull horn."