The Justice Department filed suit as promised Tuesday against Arizona claiming the state’s anti-illegal immigrant law is invalid under the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution and must be struck down.”
Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070 is scheduled to become effective July 31. The Justice Department’s next step is seeking an injunction to block its enforcement.
The suit was filed in federal court in Phoenix and names the state and Gov. Jan Brewer defendants. Among its provisions, the act makes it illegal to be in the state without proper documentation.
The brief filed under the name of Attorney General Erik Holder sounded more like a political argument. It read, in part:
“The federal agencies balance the complex – and often competing – objectives that animate federal immigration law and policy. Although states may exercise their police power in a manner that has an incidental or indirect effect on aliens, a state may not establish its own immigration policy or enforce state laws in a manner that interferes with the federal immigration laws.”
“If allowed to go into effect, S.B.1070’s mandatory enforcement scheme will conflict with and undermine the federal government’s careful balance of immigration enforcement priorities and objectives. It will cause the detention and harassment of authorized visitors, immigrants, and citizens who do not have or carry identification documents specified by the statute, or who otherwise will be swept into the ambit of S.B. 1070’s ‘attrition through enforcement’ approach. … It will altogether ignore humanitarian concerns, such as the protections available under federal law for an alien who has a well-founded fear of persecution or who has been the victim of a natural disaster. And it will interfere with vital foreign policy and national security interests by disrupting the United States’ relationship with Mexico and other countries.”
“The federal government, moreover, welcomes cooperative efforts by states and localities to aid in the enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws. But the United States Constitution forbids Arizona from supplanting the federal government’s immigration regime with its own state-specific immigration policy – a policy that, in purpose and effect, interferes with the numerous interests the federal government must balance when enforcing and administering the immigration laws and disrupts the balance actually established by the federal government. Accordingly, S.B. 1070 is invalid under the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution and must be struck down.”
In a statement, Holder said: “Arizonans are understandably frustrated with illegal immigration, and the federal government has a responsibility to comprehensively address those concerns.”
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano released this statement:
“With the strong support of state and local law enforcement, I vetoed several similar pieces of legislation as Governor of Arizona because they would have diverted critical law enforcement resources from the most serious threats to public safety and undermined the vital trust between local jurisdictions and the communities they serve. We are actively working with members of Congress from both parties to comprehensively reform our immigration system at the federal level because this challenge cannot be solved by a patchwork of inconsistent state laws, of which this is one. While this bipartisan effort to reform our immigration system progresses, the Department of Homeland Security will continue to enforce the laws on the books by enhancing border security and removing criminal aliens from this country.”
At the time this post was filed, the governor’s office was preparing a statement. In the past, the message could be boiled down to three words:
Bring it on.
The copyrighted cartoon by Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune, is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.
Jerry Remmers worked 26 years in the newspaper business. His last 23 years was with the Evening Tribune in San Diego where assignments included reporter, assistant city editor, county and politics editor.