From the New York Times, in April 2010, Arizona adopted the nation’s toughest law on illegal immigration, provoking a nationwide debate and a Justice Department lawsuit. On July 28, one day before the law was to take effect, a federal judge blocked the state from enforcing its most controversial provisions. These included sections that called for officers to check a person’s immigration status, while enforcing other laws that required immigrants to carry their papers at all times.
The law, known locally as SB1070, was aimed at discouraging illegal immigrants from entering or remaining in the state. It coincided with economic anxiety and followed a number of high-profile crimes attributed to illegal immigrants and smuggling. However, federal data suggests that crime is falling in Arizona, as it is nationally, despite a surge of immigration. The law also requires police officers, “when practicable,” to detain people they reasonably suspect are in the country without authorization and to verify their status with federal officials, unless doing so would hinder an investigation or emergency medical treatment. The law also makes it a state crime – a misdemeanor – to not carry immigration papers. In addition, it allows people to sue the local government or agencies if they believe federal or state immigration law is not being enforced.
The legislation’s supporters said it reflected frustration over inaction by the federal government, while critics said it would lead to harassment of Hispanics and turn the presumption of innocence upside down. Although the federal ruling is not final, it seems likely to halt, at least temporarily, an expanding movement by states to combat illegal immigration, by making it a state crime to be an immigrant without legal documents and by imposing new requirements on state and local police officers to enforce the immigration law.
In her ruling on July 28, United States District Court Judge Susan Bolton, in Phoenix, said that issuing a preliminary injunction barring enforcement of some elements of the law “is less harmful than allowing state laws that are likely preempted by federal law to be enforced.”
“There is a substantial likelihood that officers will wrongfully arrest legal resident aliens,” she wrote. “By enforcing this statute, Arizona would impose a ‘distinct, unusual and extraordinary’ burden on legal resident aliens that only the federal government has the authority to impose.”
Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican who signed the law and has campaigned on it for election to a full term, said the state would appeal the decision. Legal experts predicted that the case could end up before the Supreme Court.
The Arizona law had inflamed the national debate over immigration and provoked an outcry across the border. Mexico’s Foreign Ministry has said that it worried about the rights of its citizens and relations with Arizona. Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles said the authorities’ ability to demand documents was like “Nazism.” President Obama had criticized the bill shortly before Governor Brewer signed it. The Arizona law, he said, threatened “to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and our communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe.”
Immigration reform had been a dormant issue nationally, until the passage of the Arizona law in April 2010. Republicans and Democrats had agreed for years on the need for sweeping changes in the federal immigration laws. President George W. Bush, for three years, pushed for a bipartisan bill before giving up in 2007, after an outcry from voters opposed to any path to legal status for illegal aliens. But immigration reform came back to life in April 2010. About 20 other states are considering similar laws, and Democratic governors have complained to the White House of the political fallout of opposing the Arizona measure.
After the Arizona law passed, a coalition of top Senate Democrats laid out the contours of a proposed overhaul of immigration laws, and appealed to Republicans to join them in pursuing it, even as doubts mounted about the prospects of winning approval of legislation in 2010. The Justice Department, on July 6, had filed a lawsuit in a federal court in Phoenix to challenge the state law, contending that controlling immigration is a federal responsibility. Polls, however, suggest that a majority of Americans support the Arizona law, or at least the concept of a state having a strong role in immigration enforcement. The lawsuit had been expected since mid-June 2010, when the Obama administration officials first disclosed that they would contest the legislation, adding to several other suits seeking to have courts strike it down.
The federal government added its weight to the core argument in those suits, which also argued that the Arizona law usurps powers to control immigration reserved for federal authorities. The main suit was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and other civil rights groups. The mere fact of being present without legal immigration status is a civil violation under federal law, but not a crime. The Justice Department contended that the law would divert federal and local law enforcement officers by making them focus on people who may not have committed crimes and by causing the “detention and harassment of authorized visitors, immigrants and citizens.” The Justice Department suit was also aimed at stemming a tide of similar laws under consideration in other states. “The Constitution and the federal immigration laws do not permit the development of a patchwork of state and local immigration policies throughout the country,” the suit says.
White House officials said President Obama was not involved in the Justice Department’s decision to sue. But the suit came after steps by President Obama to frame the immigration debate in terms that would favor Democrats in advance of midterm elections in November, including a speech in July when he restated his commitment to overhaul legislation that would give legal status to millions of illegal immigrants.
On July 28, Judge Bolton in Phoenix blocked central provisions of the Arizona law from taking effect.
The judge broadly vindicated the Obama administration’s high-stakes move to challenge the state’s law and to assert the primary authority of the federal government over state lawmakers in immigration matters. Arizona’s lawyers had contended that the statute was written to complement federal laws. Judge Bolton, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 2000, rejected that argument, finding that four of its major provisions interfered or directly conflicted with federal laws. The Arizona police, she wrote, would have to question every person they detained about immigration status, generating a flood of requests to the federal immigration authorities for confirmations. The number of requests “is likely to impermissibly burden federal resources and redirect federal agencies away from priorities they have established,” she wrote.
While opponents of the Arizona law had said it would lead to racial profiling, the Justice Department did not dwell on those issues in its court filings. Judge Bolton brought them forward, finding significant risks for legal immigrants and perhaps American citizens. There is a “substantial likelihood that officers will wrongfully arrest legal resident aliens,” she wrote, warning that foreign tourists could also be wrongly detained. The law, she found, would increase “the intrusion of police presence into the lives of legally present aliens (and even United States citizens), who will necessarily be swept up” by it.
The federal ruling shifts the political pressure back onto President Obama to show that he can effectively enforce the border and to move forward with an overhaul of the immigrations laws, so that states will not seek to step in as Arizona did.
