State and local illegal immigrant laws in peril after ruling
by Jacques Billeaud
Associated Press

PHOENIX – The movement to get state and local governments to crack down on illegal immigration suffered a blow last week when a federal judge in Pennsylvania voided a city law that sought to punish those who hire or rent to people in the country illegally.

“The judge said it’s the federal government’s responsibility to control illegal immigration, and if they don’t do it, your local communities are out of luck. That’s unacceptable,” said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors tougher immigration enforcement and helped craft the ordinance in Hazleton, Pa.

For the last three years, a growing number of state lawmakers and local governments across the country have rejected the long‑held notion that immigration is the sole responsibility of the federal government.

Out of their frustration over the federal government’s border security efforts grew laws that deny public benefits to illegal immigrants, punish employers who knowingly hire illegal border‑crossers and prohibit people who aren’t in the country legally from renting homes or apartments.

Supporters of the laws said the goal was to reduce the costs of illegal immigration. Opponents said the laws were meant to scapegoat immigrants for the country’s broken immigration system.

U.S. District Judge James Munley ruled the Hazleton ordinance was unconstitutional, saying the law’s employer sanctions and rental restrictions were pre‑empted by federal law and would violate due process rights.

“Immigration is a national issue,” Munley wrote.

While dozens of other communities across the nation have copied the Hazleton law, the judge’s ruling applies to only the Pennsylvania city.

Although the decision wasn’t considered a legal precedent with direct implications for communities across the country, legal experts said it will probably lead other cities and towns to drop such laws rather than shell out money to defend the approach in court.

“City councils and city attorneys will think long and hard before they get into immigration enforcement,” said Kevin Johnson, a law professor at the University of California at Davis who  specializes in immigration law.

Johnson said state and local governments can play only a limited role in immigration enforcement.

Their police officers can receive special federal training that lets them make immigration arrests, and they can regulate day labor sites to ensure that people looking for work on streets aren’t jeopardizing public safety, Johnson said.

The ruling was the latest in a stream of decisions over many decades that reject state and local attempts at enforcing immigration, said Michael A. Olivas, who teaches immigration law at the University of Houston’s Law Center.

“Not one of these (laws) has been allowed to stand,” Olivas said. “We don’t change the constitution because federal (immigration) enforcement doesn’t work.”

Even with its narrow reach, the decision is already producing ripples elsewhere.

In Arizona, attorneys for business groups said they were seizing on the Hazleton decision in their challenge of a new state law that prohibits employers from hiring illegal immigrants.

Tanya Broder, an attorney for the National Immigration Law Center, a group that aims to protect the rights of low‑income immigrants, said she hopes the Pennsylvania ruling will help refocus the immigration debate in Congress to reflect a welcoming view of immigrants.

“State and local governments will realize they can’t enact a thousand immigration policies,” Broder said.

Supporters of the Hazleton law said the ordinance is legally sound and they expect the appeal of the ruling to be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court.

“If the federal government won’t do its job, then the local communities that are left to deal with it have to find a way to deal with it,” Mehlman said.