WASHINGTON — The Justice Department filed suit Tuesday against Arizona, charging that the state’s new immigration law is unconstitutional and requesting a preliminary injunction to stop the legislation from taking effect.
The lawsuit says the law illegally intrudes on federal prerogatives, invoking as its main argument the legal doctrine of “pre-emption,” which is based on the Constitution’s supremacy clause and says federal law trumps state statutes. The Justice Department argues that enforcing immigration laws is a federal responsibility and says an injunction is needed to prevent “irreparable harm” to the United States.
But the filing also asserts that the Arizona law would harm people’s civil rights, leading to police harassment of U.S. citizens and foreigners. President Barack Obama has warned that the law could violate citizens’ civil rights, and Attorney General Eric Holder has expressed concern that it could drive a wedge between police and immigrant communities.
“Arizona impermissibly seeks to regulate immigration by creating an Arizona-specific immigration policy that is expressly designed to rival or supplant that of the federal government,” the Justice Department says in its legal brief. “As such, Arizona’s immigration policy exceeds a state’s role with respect to aliens, interferes with the federal government’s balanced administration of the immigration laws, and critically undermines U.S. foreign-policy objectives.”
It adds that the law “does not simply seek to provide legitimate support to the federal government’s immigration policy, but instead creates an unprecedented independent immigration scheme that exceeds constitutional boundaries.”
The Justice Department argues that the law would burden federal agencies, diverting resources from the pursuit of people implicated in terrorism, drug smuggling, gang activity and other crimes.
“The law’s mandates on Arizona law enforcement will also result in the harassment and detention of foreign visitors and legal immigrants, as well as U.S. citizens, who cannot readily prove their lawful status,” the department said in a news release.
GOP, officials rip suit
But Republican lawmakers, state officials and defenders of the Arizona law promptly condemned the lawsuit.
John McCain and Jon Kyl, Arizona’s two Republican senators, issued a joint statement saying it was “far too premature” for the Obama administration to challenge the law because it has not yet been enforced. It is scheduled to take effect July 29.
“Moreover, the American people must wonder whether the Obama administration is really committed to securing the border when it sues a state that is simply trying to protect its people by enforcing immigration law,” the statement said. The administration “has not done everything it can do to protect the people of Arizona from the violence and crime illegal immigration brings to our state,” McCain and Kyl charged. “Until it does, the federal government should not be suing Arizona on the grounds that immigration enforcement is solely a federal responsibility.”
To support its case, the Justice Department included declarations from Arizona law enforcement officials, including the police chiefs of Phoenix and Tucson, saying the law would hamper their ability to effectively police their communities. The officials said crime victims or witnesses would be less likely to cooperate with law enforcement and that officers would have to be reassigned from critical areas to implement the legislation.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the administration is “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.”
Suit filed in Phoenix
The federal lawsuit will dramatically escalate the legal and political battle over the Arizona law, which gives police the power to question anyone if they have a “reasonable suspicion” that the person is an illegal immigrant.
The case was filed in federal court in Phoenix. A preliminary injunction halting the law from taking effect later this month would have to be issued by a judge. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed the law in April.
Brewer’s spokesman, Paul Senseman, called the Justice Department’s lawsuit “a terribly bad decision,” The Associated Press reported.
It also reported that state Sen. Russell Pearce, the principal sponsor of the Arizona law, denounced the lawsuit as an “absolute insult to the rule of law” as well as to Arizona and its residents.
