Begrudgingly, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has suspended his raids on suspected undocumented immigrants, after a federal judge ruled his department engaged in racial profiling and ordered it to cease the program immediately.

Arpaio's office says it is temporarily halting all immigration enforcement, ahead of a follow-up hearing on the matter scheduled for next week. "We are out of the immigration business until that hearing. Until that hearing, better safe than sorry," said Brandon Jones, a spokesperson for Arpaio.

That should make plenty of locals and federal officials happy. Hispanic residents have long complained that Arpaio and his deputies target them for investigation without evidence, a claim Arpaio corroborated during previous hearings. Locals say Arpaio has ignored over 400 unsolved sexual assault cases in his zeal to catch undocumented immigrants, even though most of the people stopped by his "posse" have been American citizens or legal residents.

In addition, taxpayers had had to pay more than $25 million to settle suits against the department. The Obama administration has stripped Arpaio of his federal immigration enforcement rights, and the latest ruling likely guarantees that other sheriffs around the country will need to give up theirs as well.

"There are other agencies out there that have been doing similar things more quietly," said Cecillia Wang, a lawyer who pressed the profiling case on behalf of a group of Latinos and the leader of the American Civil Liberties Union's immigrant rights project.

However, there is still plenty of public support for Arpaio and his methods. This week, a petition to recall the sheriff fell short of the necessary 335,000 signatures.