Story Created:
Jul 15, 2010 at 12:34 PM PST
Story Updated:
Jul 15, 2010 at 12:34 PM PST
The Los Angeles-based Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law and the League of United Latin American Citizens have filed a federal lawsuit challenging Arizona’s new immigration law.
The complaint, filed last Friday in federal court in Phoenix as a class action, alleges that Arizona’s training materials recently developed and distributed to Arizona law enforcement agencies to implement the law “exacerbate the conflicts between the United States Constitution and federal laws on the one hand, and Arizona law on the other hand.”
“The training materials issued a few days ago by Arizona are so vague and ill-defined that they will certainly lead to widespread racial profiling and discrimination,” said Peter Schey, president of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law.
Schey served as lead counsel in the lawsuit that resulted in California’s Proposition 187, which barred illegal immigrants from state-funded services, unconstitutional. He now serves as lead counsel for the plaintiffs in the Arizona case.
“The Arizona law and its training materials conflict with federal immigration law in numerous ways so that immigrants who are known to the federal authorities with petitions to legalize their status will nevertheless be subject to detention, arrest and prosecution in Arizona because they do not possess the kinds of specific documentary proof Arizona insists upon to establish lawful presence,” he said.
The complaint alleges that Arizona’s training materials violate federal law “by failing to recognize that numerous categories of immigrants who did not enter the United States lawfully nevertheless are eligible for legalization of status,” and “by permitting law enforcement officers to rely upon vague and ill-defined factors” such as a person’s dress, difficulty communicating in English,
demeanor and claim of not knowing others at the same location as providing justification for a detention based on suspected undocumented status.
The lawsuit argues that Arizona’s law is “void and should be struck down under the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution.”
The plaintiffs include League of United Latin American Citizens, two university professors who seek standing as taxpayers, and five undocumented immigrants whose presence is known to the federal government and who are seeking legalization of status in pending petitions but do not possess the type of documentation showing lawful residence that the new Arizona law demands to avoid detention, arrest, and prosecution.
“As the oldest and largest Hispanic civil rights organization in the United States, we are profoundly disturbed by the anti-immigrant law recently enacted in Arizona,” said LULAC National President Rosa Rosales. “We plan to vigorously fight that law, and Arizona’s discriminatory training materials to implement the law, in the federal courts, in the Arizona legislature, and in the United States Congress.
“Arizona may be frustrated, as are we, with Congress’ failure to seriously address comprehensive immigration reform. Nevertheless, the solution is not a patchwork of varying state laws, each trying to be more repressive than the next to force immigrants to go elsewhere.”
The U.S. Justice Department has also announced that it will seek to have Arizona’s law, which allows state law enforcement officers to check the immigration status of suspects stopped for other reasons, to be declared unconstitutional.
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