PHOENIX — Arizona shouldn’t have to suffer from the country’s broken immigration system when it has 15,000 police officers who can arrest illegal immigrants, state attorneys argued Thursday in the first major hearing on challenges to a strict new immigration law.
John Bouma, an attorney for the state, said federal authorities haven’t done an adequate job of lessening Arizona’s immigration woes, such as criminal immigrants who have assaulted police officers.
But allowing Arizona to carry out its own immigration law violates all court decisions that hold that only the federal government can handle immigration, said Stephen Montoya, an attorney for Phoenix police Officer David Salgado, who filed the lawsuit.
“The federal government doesn’t want this assistance,” Montoya said.
U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton didn’t rule on whether to block the law from taking effect July 29 or whether to dismiss the lawsuit, one of seven.
Attorneys for Gov. Jan Brewer told Bolton that the lawsuit — filed by Phoenix police Officer David Salgado and the statewide nonprofit group Chicanos Por La Causa — should be dismissed because they lack legal standing to sue and that there’s no valid claim of immediate harm.
But Salgado’s attorney disagreed.
“He does have a real threat,” Montoya said. “They can fire him. That’s enough.”
Protesters and supporters of the law gathered outside the courthouse, separated by at least seven Phoenix police officers carrying guns and handcuffs.
Hearings on the six other lawsuits, including one filed by the federal government, are set for July 22.
