Arizona passes measure to arrest immigrants entering U.S. illegally – Mother Jones

A group sits in front of the Tucson, Arizona section of the U.S.-Mexico border.Matt York/AP

Arizona voters passed Proposition 314, a measure that would allow state and local police to arrest people crossing the border outside ports of entry and give state judges the power to order deportations. The ballot measure passed with just over 62 percent of the vote. Advocates, including ACLU Arizona and the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, have strongly condemned the measure and warned it would open the door to racist profiling and harassment of people of color living in Arizona.

The law will likely face challenges since immigration enforcement is a federal power. and similar state laws have been affected in the past.

Arizona is no stranger to constitutionally questionable immigration laws. In 2012, the Supreme Court rejected most of Senate Bill 1070, which made it illegal to be in the state without papers. that states don’t have the power to punish people for being in the country without papers.

In Texas, a similar bill aimed at allowing Texas police to arrest people crossing the border with Mexico outside the state’s ports of entry has been repeatedly blocked due to legal challenges from the Justice Department and immigration groups that say the law infringes on the federal government’s sole authority over immigration.

The measures in Arizona and Texas are among a growing number of anti-immigrant proposals from Republican state lawmakers across the country. The League of United Latin American Citizens – one of the largest Latin American civil rights organizations in the country – noted that state lawmakers had already proposed proposals 233 anti-immigrants bills more than a month before Election Day, more than four times the 2020 total.