Federal Judge De-Fangs Arizona Immigration Law One Day Before It's Set to Take Effect

A Federal Judge issued an injunction against much of Arizona's SB1070 law targeting illegal immigrants on Wednesday- a day before the law was scheduled to take effect.

According to the Arizona Republic, US District Judge Susan Bolton's last-minute injunction blocks the following portions of SB1070 from taking effect

• The portion of the law that requires an officer make a reasonable attempt to determine the immigration status of a person stopped, detained or arrested if there's reasonable suspicion they're in the country illegally.

• The portion that creates a crime of failure to apply for or carry "alien-registration papers."

• The portion that allows for a warrantless arrest of a person where there is probable cause to believe they have committed a public offense that makes them removable from the United States.

• The portion that makes it a crime for illegal immigrants to solicit, apply for or perform work. There are three parts to that part of the law. Two of them will go into effect, one of them will not.
The ruling also says that law enforcement still must enforce federal immigration laws to the fullest extent of the law when SB 1070 goes into effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday. Individuals will still be able to sue an agency if they adopt a policy that restricts such enforcement.

Bolton did not halt the part of the law that creates misdemeanors crimes for harboring and transporting illegal immigrants

The Arizona Governor's office had already filed an expedited appeal with the US 9th Circuit court, saying that yesterday's ruling wasn't completely unexpected. Arizona is currently facing lawsuits from the Justice Department, the ACLU and the Mexican government over SB1070.

Justice Department spokeswoman Hannah August applauded the ruling.

"While we understand the frustration of Arizonans with the broken immigration system, a patchwork of state and local policies would seriously disrupt federal immigration enforcement and would ultimately be counterproductive," August said.

[Note: 'Broken immigration system' is a phrase that's usually a preamble to 'Comprehensive immigration reform', which is in and of itself a euphemism of 'blanket amnesty' -NANESB!].

Yes- the Justice Department understands the frustration of Arizonans so well that they've decided to combat the rampant human smuggling and drug trafficking through the deserts of the border states with signs, lawsuits and calls for stricter gun control laws here in the USA.

No word on whether or not the Justice Department will go after Rhode Island next.