Due Process and the Courts
Enforcing Your Way into the Red: Hazleton Could Learn an Expensive Immigration Lesson
Yet another locality learned the financial perils of passing an anti-immigrant law. Last Friday, a panel from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court decision to require the City of Hazelton, PA, to pay $2.4 million in legal fees to the Plaintiffs instead of their insurance carrier. The Plaintiffs (Pedro Lozano, Casa Dominicana of Hazleton Inc., Hazleton Hispanic Business Association and the Pennsylvania Statewide Latino Coalition) accumulated legal fees when they challenged the constitutionality of the Hazleton law—a law which would have fined landlords renting to undocumented immigrants, denied businesses permits if they employed undocumented immigrants, and had the town investigate the legal status of an employee or tenant upon request of any citizen, business, or organization. Read More
Will the Fate of Arizona’s SB 1070 Hinge on the Law that Created the 287(g) Program?
It’s not every day that federal officials cite Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) as a limit on—rather than an expansion of—the authority of local police to assist in immigration enforcement. But a veteran Justice Department attorney made just that point during arguments in a federal appeals court yesterday while defending an injunction against Arizona’s SB 1070. Read More
Supreme Court to Hear Two Cases Affecting Immigrants, Including a Case Challenging a Recent Anti-Immigrant Law
This week, the United States Supreme Court opened its October session. Among the cases it will hear is a challenge to a state law that sanctions employers for hiring unauthorized workers. This is the first case challenging the recent influx of state and local laws attempting to regulate immigrants and immigration and an opportunity for the Supreme Court to assert the federal government’s constitutional right to set immigration law. In the second immigration case, the Supreme Court must decide whether former citizenship law provisions—which imposed a five-year residency requirement for U.S. citizen fathers, but not mothers—violate equal protection. Read More
Arizona’s New Law Upends Federal Priorities
Today, a federal judge will begin to hear arguments on Arizona law SB1070. One of the problems with SB1070 is that it places the federal government in an impossible situation. While the proponents of SB1070 say that Arizona will help ICE enforce immigration laws, the fact is that it would impinge upon ICE’s ability to fulfill its mandate, set enforcement priorities, and allocate resources effectively. SB1070 would inundate DHS with requests to determine the immigration status of individuals police have arrested for suspicion of being unlawfully present. If ICE determines that the individual is indeed unlawfully present, ICE would be expected to take custody of him/her and place him/her in deportation proceedings. Today, IPC released a new fact check on how Arizona's new law interferes with federal enforcement priorities. Read More
Obama Administration Mimics George W. Bush on Immigration Prosecutions
It would seem that the Obama administration has chosen to mimic its predecessor in its zeal to pursue the criminal prosecution of unauthorized immigrants for minor, nonviolent offenses such as crossing the border. As the Associated Press reported recently, “federal prosecutions of immigrants soared to new levels this spring, as the Obama administration continued an aggressive enforcement strategy championed under President George W. Bush.” However, the IPC has noted that this “dramatic increase in criminal prosecutions can be traced in large part to Operation Streamline, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program which mandates federal criminal prosecution and subsequent imprisonment of all persons caught crossing the border unlawfully.” Yet large numbers of these federal immigration prosecutions “have focused on non-violent border crossers.” In other words, DHS under the Obama administration is needlessly clogging the federal courts with people who have not committed any serious crime. Read More
A Closer Look at the Seven Lawsuits Challenging Arizona Law S.B. 1070
Almost immediately after Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed S.B. 1070 into law, lawsuits were filed in federal court in Arizona challenging the law. The lawsuits all seek the same result—a halt to the law’s enforcement—although each suit argues different grounds. Some suits cite civil liberty violations, racial profiling and unlawful regulation of federal immigration law, while another suit states that the police training videos exacerbate conflicts between federal and state law. As July 29, 2010, the date S.B. 1070 is set to go into effect, draws near, litigants and supporters on both sides of the lawsuits are seeking swift resolutions. Ultimately though, the timing of any resolution will depend on the court. Read More
Arizona Senators Decry DOJ Lawsuit Yet Refuse to Support Immigration Reform
Yesterday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit against the state of Arizona, challenging the state’s immigration enforcement law (SB 1070). The DOJ lawsuit—which seeks to stop the law from going into effect on July 29th—argues that Arizona’s law is unconstitutional since it claims state authority over federal immigration policy. While political opposition in Arizona to DOJ’s legal challenge has come from both parties, some of the most laughable comments have come from Arizona’s Republican Senators who have used the lawsuit as yet another opportunity to claim that the Obama administration has failed to do anything on immigration. Only Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) has been willing to engage the Democrats on immigration at all this year and even still, Sen. Graham back peddled after health care reform was passed. To date, ZERO Republicans are willing to step forward and play ball on an actual immigration reform bill—which makes the political finger-pointing from those unwilling to meet the President halfway all the more infuriating. Read More
A Lopsided Approach to Border Violence Doesn’t Solve Anything
During a debate of the defense authorization bill this week, Republican members of Congress are expected to push for the deployment of even more troops to the border. This is in addition to the 1,200 National Guard troops President Obama already requested to address border violence and the flow of drugs and guns across the border last month. However, while advocating for the allocation of more money and manpower to “secure the border” may make for good campaigning in an election year, experts find that beefing up the border actually does little to curb border violence. In fact, these “get tough” border initiatives—more troops, fencing and operations that target non-violent border crossers—pull valuable resources away from solving violent crimes. Read More
Class Action Challenging Arizona Law Reveals Depth of Constitutional Rights at Stake
Yesterday, a diverse group of individuals and organizations filed a class action challenging Arizona’s harsh immigration enforcement law SB 1070, scheduled to go into effect on July 28, 2010. This law, among other things requires state and local law enforcement to check the immigration status of individuals it encounters, and makes it a state crime to be without proper immigration documentation. The lawsuit offers a compelling look at the egregiousness of the law, the variety of constitutional rights at stake, and the diverse group of individuals and organizations who will be adversely affected if the law goes into effect. Read More
Immigrants, African Americans and the Struggle for Civil Rights
In a new report released today by the Immigration Policy Center, Before Brown, There was Mendez: The Lasting Impact of Mendez v. Westminster in the Struggle for Desegregation, author Maria Blanco examines the impact of a federal circuit court's 1947 decision which found the segregation of Mexican American school children in California unconstitutional. It is fitting that Blanco, who is the Executive Director of the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute at Berkeley Law, wrote this paper because of the key role that Justice Warren played in both the Mendez and Brown cases. Before Brown, There was Mendez tells a unique story of an immigrant family as well as the story of the people who came together to support them and make history. The Mendez family story alone is an amazing tale of strength and perseverance in the face of discrimination and bigotry. Read More
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