The Supreme Court announced today that it will take Arizona's restrictive and controversial immigration law under review. The Justice Department has successfully blocked several of the state's efforts to crack down on illegal immigration in lower courts, including making it a state crime to be in the country illegally and failing to register with the federal government; making it illegal to seek work or working when not authorized; requiring state and local officers to try to determine the status of someone arrested, stopped or detained if they believe the individual might be in the country unlawfully; and allowing warrantless arrest of anyone who they have probable cause to believe might have violated laws that would make them deportable under federal law.
The Washington Post reports:
The administration said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco was correct to rule that Arizona was trying to take on immigration enforcement that belongs solely to the federal government.
Arizona told the justices in asking them to accept the case that the border state was feeling the brunt of a “broken” immigration system, and that its law was intended to cooperate with federal laws to control illegal immigration, not to usurp the federal government’s power.
But when Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) signed S.B. 1070 in April 2010, she described it as a way for her state to “solve a crisis we did not create and the federal government has refused to fix.”
Brewer in a statement Monday commended the court for accepting the case and said she was “stunned at the audacity of the Obama administration to file suit” against Arizona and other states that passed restrictive laws.
The case is Arizona v. United States.
Read more at the Washington Post.
Like The Root on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.