Washington, D.C. — More than a decade since the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed the supremacy of federal immigration law in Arizona v. United States, a new Center for American Progress analysis finds that some Republican states are enacting patently unconstitutional legislation to invite the new far-right majority on the court to overturn its 2012 precedent. The column calls on the courts to reject these unconstitutional power grabs, as they have rejected similar efforts in the past.
States such as Florida, Texas, Iowa, and Oklahoma have enacted laws that openly defy the limits of their authority, spread fear and confusion throughout their communities, and waste resources crafting and defending unconstitutional legislation—all based on the false premise that the Biden administration has failed to enforce the nation’s immigration laws.
- Florida has made it a state crime to transport individuals who had entered the country unlawfully, despite binding 11th Circuit precedent making clear that this is an exclusive federal authority.
- Texas and Iowa have passed laws that give state officials unprecedented powers to prosecute and remove people suspected of having entered or reentered the country illegally—even while the federal government is deciding whether they may have a right to stay. Such laws would not only invite rampant racial profiling, but also largely replicate provisions of federal criminal law and badly conflict with federal authority over removal.
- Oklahoma targets immigrants with a new criminal offense of “occupation,” which is used in international humanitarian law to refer to a hostile military invasion. This is a dangerous and baseless narrative has been cited as motivation for multiple large-scale acts of violence such as the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, that targeted Latinos and killed 23 people.
Read the column: “Recent Anti-Immigrant State Laws Break New Grounds of Illegality” by Tom Jawetz.
For more information or to speak with an expert, please contact Julia Cusick at [email protected].