A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled early on Monday that U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton was correct in placing an injunction on the enforcement of four key provisions of Arizona’s controversial immigration law, SB 1070, as they are an infringement on the exclusive federal power to enforce immigration laws, and that states can’t make their own laws as they wish.
The injunction was placed pending a lawsuit brought by the The U.S Justice Department, which has sued to block the law contending that Congress has given the federal government sole authority to enforce immigration statutes and that SB 1070 violates the Supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution..
The 9th Circuit panel declined to lift the injunction ruling that the lawsuit was likely to succeed.
The main provision that was struck down would have required police and sheriff’s to order anyone they stopped for any other reason to produce ID proving legal status if they had reasonable suspicion that the individual might be illegal.
The 87-page, precedent-heavy opinion also suggests that the AZ law is something of a legal muddle apart from its Constitutional problems, in that it has several internal consistencies in its detailing of how local law enforcement officers are supposed to behave toward those suspected to be undocumented.
And, as the SF Chron notes:
[Judge Richard Paez, who wrote the majority opinion] said the law has also harmed U.S. foreign relations, citing protests from numerous Latin American nations – notably Mexico, which has cited it in delaying a proposed agreement on responding to national disasters – and the United Nations secretary general.
Si Se Puede!