New York Times
By Fernanda Santos
May 30, 2014
PHOENIX
— The Obama administration has moved to drop its legal fight against
what is arguably the most controversial provision of Arizona’s sweeping
immigration law, the
so-called show-me-your-papers provision permitting police officers to
pull over people based on the suspicion that they are in the country
illegally.
In
return, Arizona has agreed to stop fighting to restore a section of the
law that gives the police the power to arrest those who harbor people
living in the United States
illegally.
The
deal reflects the consequences of previous rulings on the law,
including a 2012 decision by the United States Supreme Court to sustain
the “show me your papers” provision,
and the court’s refusal this April to review an appellate court’s
decision blocking the harboring provision.
In
the 2012 ruling, the Supreme Court left the door open to further
challenges to the “show me your papers” provision, and that portion of
the law remains under challenge
in a class-action lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union
and other rights groups on behalf of Arizonans.
In
an interview on Friday, Cecillia Wang, director of the A.C.L.U.’s
immigrant rights project, said: “It is a good sign that Arizona has
finally recognized that the harboring
provision is unconstitutional and the state has nowhere else to go.
What we hope is that they will also see the light in other
unconstitutional provisions of this immigration law, and that’s what
we’ll continue to pursue in our case.”
Messages left for the Justice Department and Gov. Jan Brewer’s spokesman, Andrew Wilder, yielded no responses on Friday.
The
agreement, signaled in a joint status report filed in United States
District Court here on Thursday, would pave the way for the end of a
contentious and highly political
dispute between the Justice Department and Arizona, but it also makes
clear that not all of their differences have been resolved. The sides
have not decided what to do about a widely embraced interpretation of
Arizona’s human-smuggling laws, through which
the authorities have regularly filed conspiracy charges against
immigrants who paid a smuggler to bring them illegally into the country.
The deal is subject to approval by a judge. The parties are scheduled to appear in court on Thursday.
It
would nonetheless leave the door open for future challenges by the
Justice Department to the “show me your papers” section if there is
evidence of abuse, because the
department agreed to drop its challenge “without prejudice,” that a new
case may be brought.
Signed
in 2010, Arizona’s immigration law had been widely regarded as the
driving force behind the surge of Ms. Brewer, a Republican, in the polls
and her election that
year for her first full term as governor. (As secretary of state, she
became governor once Janet Napolitano resigned to serve as President
Obama’s Homeland Security secretary.)
The harboring ban is one of a handful of provisions in the immigration law that the courts have struck down.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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