Immigration Decision Appealed; Protestors Block Streets

The decision by an Arizona federal judge gutting the strongest parts of the state’s efforts to control illegal immigration within its borders did not prevent new legal and public battles from erupting Thursday.

On the legal front, Arizona asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to lift expeditiously U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton’s preliminary injunction, preventing Arizona from enforcing the strongest parts of a law designed to curb illegal immigration in the state.

Gov. Jan Brewer has said she’ll take the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.

Meanwhile, opponents of the law, did not celebrate their judicial victory Thursday. Instead they marched through the streets of downtown Phoenix to protest against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has made a crackdown on illegal immigration one of his signature issues.

(polls)

The protestors marched peacefully, but blocked city streets. When ordered to disband, they refused to do so as an act of civil disobedience, according to them. Police in riot gear arrested an estimated 50 or the protestors, who did not resist.

Former state Sen. Alfredo Gutierrez, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2002, was among them. A photographer for the Arizona Republic also was detained.

Marchers chanted “Sheriff Joe, we are here, we will not live in fear,” and in the crowd was a drummer wearing a papier-mache Sheriff Joe head and dressed in prison garb.

Arpaio vowed to go ahead with a crime sweep targeting illegal immigrants later in the day.

In response to the protestors, Arpaio said: “My deputies will arrest them and put them in pink underwear. Count on it.” Making prisoners he arrests wear pink underwear is one of Sheriff Arpaio’s unique ways he uses to enforce the law.

Arizona is the nation’s epicenter of illegal immigration, with more than 400,000 undocumented residents. The state’s border with Mexico is awash with smugglers and drugs that funnel narcotics and immigrants throughout the U.S., and supporters of the new law say the influx of illegal migrants drains vast sums of money from hospitals, education and other services.

Protestors also took to the streets in Tucson, Arizona in Los Angeles and in New York City. In Tucson, between 50 and 100 people gathered at a downtown street corner to both protest and defend the new law on Thursday morning. Tucson police spokeswoman Linda Galindo said one man was arrested for threatening people in the other group.

In Los Angeles, about 200 protesters invaded a busy intersection west of downtown. Police waited more than three hours before declaring it an unlawful assembly. Most of the demonstrators left peacefully, but about a dozen, linked together with plastic pipes and chains, lay in the street in a circle as an act of civil disobedience. Officer Bruce Borihanh said police were cutting their chains and taking them away to be booked for failure to disperse.

The protesters chanted, “These are our streets” during the raucous demonstration.

In New York City, about 300 immigrant advocates gathered near the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan. New York City Councilman Jumaane Williams, a first-generation Caribbean-American, told the crowd: “We won a slight battle in Arizona, we’ve got to continue with the war.”

Kris Kobach, the University of Missouri-Kansas City law professor who helped write the law and train Arizona police officers in immigration law, conceded the ruling weakens the force of Arizona’s efforts to crack down on illegal immigrants. He said it will likely be a year before a federal appeals court decides the case.

“It’s a temporary setback,” Kobach said. “The bottom line is that every lawyer in Judge Bolton’s court knows this is just the first pitch in a very long baseball game.”

Opponents of the law said the ruling sends a strong message to other states hoping to replicate the law. Lawmakers or candidates in as many as 18 states say they want to push similar measures when their legislative sessions start up again in 2011.

“Surely it’s going to make states pause and consider how they’re drafting legislation and how it fits in a constitutional framework,” Dennis Burke, the U.S. attorney for Arizona, told The Associated Press. “The proponents of this went into court saying there was no question that this was constitutional, and now you have a federal judge who’s said, ‘Hold on, there’s major issues with this bill.’”

But a lawmaker in Utah said the state will likely take up a similar law anyway.

“The ruling … should not be a reason for Utah to not move forward,” said Utah state Rep. Carl Wimmer, a Republican from Herriman City, who said he plans to co-sponsor a bill similar to Arizona’s next year and wasn’t surprised it was blocked. “For too long the states have cowered in the corner because of one ruling by one federal judge.”

The Americano/Agencies

Related posts:

1. Arizona Immigration Law Temporarily Blocked The Arizona immigration law (SB 1070) approved by the...
2. Federal Judge blocks guts of Arizona’s Immigration Law A federal judge for the United States District Court for...
3. Justice Department Files Suit Against Arizona Immigration Law In an attempt to prevent the state of Arizona from...
4. States Ready to Pass Arizona-Inspired Immigration Legislation Over 1,000 pieces of legislation relating to illegal immigration have...
5. Two Battles For the Border: One Legal, One Violent Two stories -- one on each side of the U.S....