Attorneys for Gov. Jan Brewer have asked a judge to throw out the U.S. Justice Department’s challenge to the state of Arizona’s new immigration law.
The governor’s lawyers said Monday the federal government hasn’t shown it has suffered actual harm from the law and instead bases its claim on speculation.
The federal government says the state law is trumped by federal law and that it has hurt U.S. relations with Mexico. It is scheduled to take effect Thursday.
Attorneys for Brewer say Mexico’s disapproval of the law doesn’t make it unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton is considering requests by the Justice Department, a Phoenix police officer and civil rights groups to put the law on hold.
The federal government meanwhile is rapidly expanding a program to identify illegal immigrants using fingerprints from arrests, drawing opposition from local authorities and advocates who argue the initiative amounts to an excessive dragnet.
The program has gotten less attention than Arizona’s new immigration law, but it may end up having a bigger impact because of its potential to round up and deport so many immigrants nationwide.
Under the program, the fingerprints of everyone who is booked into jail for any crime are run against FBI criminal history records and Department of Homeland Security immigration records to determine who is in the country illegally and whether they’ve been arrested previously. Most jurisdictions are not included in the program, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been expanding the initiative.
