ACLU Sues and Localities Retreat from Immigration Laws

The liberal activist federal judge’s ruling today blocking the key provisions of Arizona’s tough anti-illegal alien law was not exactly unexpected.

Federal authorities who are trying to overturn the law have argued that letting the Arizona law stand would create a patchwork of immigration laws nationwide that would needlessly complicate the foreign relations of the United States. Federal lawyers said the law is disrupting U.S. relations with Mexico and other countries and would burden the agency that responds to immigration-status inquiries.

[U.S. District Judge Susan] Bolton noted that the expected increase in immigration checks from Arizona will divert federal resources away from other priorities and said the federal government has shown that it’s likely to succeed on its claim that such mandatory checks under the Arizona law would be trumped by federal law.

“…from other priorities…“?!? There ARE other priorities of the federal government besides enforcing federal law? Judge Bolton, a Clinton appointee, sided with the arguments put forward by the Obama regime and ACLU.

Both the ACLU and the Justice Department argued that the legislation, signed into law in April by Gov. Jan Brewer, violates the U.S. Constitution because it claims for a state the right to enforce immigration laws, which is the exclusive province of the federal government.

The group of plaintiffs led by the ACLU also said the new law would lead to racial profiling and inevitably violate the constitutional rights of some American citizens, especially Latinos, by subjecting them to unlawful interrogations, searches, seizures and arrests.

The State of Arizona promises to appeal the decision to the even whackier, more activist 9th Circuit Court, which guarantees that this case will make its way to the Supreme Court.

This all means that Local jurisdictions around the nation who plan to enact similar laws will have their work cut out for them trying to get said laws to remain intact and unimpeded by pin-headed liberal activist federal judges. Some are even chickening out and suspending statutes due to actual or pending ACLU lawsuits. Case in point: Fremont, Nebraska, about which I reported last week. As it turns out, their Arizona-like law, under attack from a pending ACLU lawsuit, has now been put on hold as well.

Last month, the Fremont city council made headlines for passing an immigration law similar to Arizona’s. Like Arizona, Fremont faced lawsuit threats from organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Mexican American Legal Defense & Educational Fund (MALDEF). While at the time the Fremont City Council promised to enforce the voter-supported bill, they are now backing down, at least temporarily, in the face of legal challenges.

“We voted to suspend the law because the ACLU and MALDEF had filed an injunction that was to go into place tomorrow,” Fremont City Council member Sean Gitt told The Daily Caller. “We wanted to give our legal counsel time to deal with that.”

However, the suspension is only temporary, according to Gitt. If the law is not struck down in court, it will go into effect as soon as the legal battles are over, Gitt said.

The only hope for localities is probably if more of them — a flood of them — enact laws a plenty, to keep the ACLU jumping and deplete their resources. OR, somewhere, somehow, perhaps a non-activist federal judge with the sense God gave prairie dogs will rule that Arizona-type immigration laws as merely the local-level enforcement of federal laws that the feds are unable — or unwilling — to enforce themselves.

UPDATE: More biting commentary here from STACLU regular and Arizona resident Van Helsing.