Judge negates Ariz. county’s policy
A federal judge has barred Arizona’s most populous county from using a policy that allows people who paid to be smuggled into the U.S. to be charged under the state’s immigrant smuggling law as conspirators in the crime.
U.S. District Judge Robert Broomfield’s ruling said Maricopa County’s interpretation of the 2005 state law cannot be enforced by Sheriff Joe Arpaio or county prosecutors because it conflicts with — and is trumped by — federal law.
Broomfield said the policy criminalizes actions that federal law treats as a civil matter.
The county attorney’s office was reviewing the ruling and had no immediately comment, spokesman Jerry Cobb said.
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Arpaio’s immigration enforcement powers have been sapped since October 2009, when Washington stripped some of his officers of their power to make federal immigration arrests. Arpaio continued by enforcing Arizona’s smuggling law and another state immigration law.
In a separate racial-profiling case in federal court, a judge in May ruled that Arpaio’s department had systematically singled out Latinos in its immigration patrols.
Associated Press
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Immigration overhaul legislation has been dormant in the House for months, but a few Republicans are working behind the scenes to advance it at a time the Capitol is immersed in a partisan brawl over government spending and President Barack Obama’s health care law.
The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, has been discussing possible legal status for the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. He’s also been working with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a fellow Virginia Republican, on a bill offering citizenship to immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. as children.
Reps. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, and Ted Poe, R-Texas, are working on a plan to create a visa program allowing more lower-skilled workers into the country.
Goodlatte and the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, hope to see floor action by late October on a series of immigration bills that already have passed their committees.
“I would think that would be the next agenda item in the queue after we’re done with this mess,” McCaul said this past week, referring to bitter divisions over the health law, the level of government spending and the growing federal debt.
The attention of House GOP leaders seems certain to remain squarely focused on the fiscal disputes until they are resolved, leaving immigration on a back burner for some time to come. But lawmakers and outside advocates insist that three months after the Democratic-led Senate passed a sweeping immigration bill, the issue is showing signs of life in the Republican-run House.
Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and other members of the House Republican leadership also support a resolution to an issue that has become a political drag for their party.
While Goodlatte has been outspoken about his desire to get legislation to the floor as soon as possible, House leaders have been more circumspect, adding to the uncertainty about whether or when anything actually will happen.
House leaders have said they plan a step-by-step approach, in contrast to the comprehensive Senate bill that added billions of dollars in new spending on border security, remade the legal immigration system from top to bottom and created a 13-year path to citizenship for the millions living here illegally.
McCaul’s committee has approved a border security bill. Goodlatte’s committee has signed off on legislation addressing a range of issues, including visas for high-skilled workers and enforcement of immigration laws.
But so far, there’s been no House GOP bill taking on the trickiest policy issue for Republicans: what to do about those already here illegally.
A bill in the works by Cantor and Goodlatte would offer eventual citizenship to immigrants brought here as children. The proposal appears to have support from a fair number of Republicans. But many Republicans are wary of backing anything broader that could be perceived as “amnesty” for people who broke U.S. immigration laws to be in this country.
There’s no guarantee House Republicans ever will offer a bill to resolve that issue, much less bring it to the floor for a vote.
Still, Goodlatte has outlined in some detail what he would like to see in such a bill, and his approach may contain the seeds of compromise.
Goodlatte would allow immigrants here illegally to obtain legal work status, and from there, they could use the existing routes to citizenship: marrying a U.S. citizen or getting sponsored by an employer or U.S. citizen relative. Such an approach would allow Republicans to deal with millions of people in the U.S. illegally without bestowing a so-called special path to citizenship as the Senate did — a concept that’s become toxic to many in the GOP.
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