PHOENIX β A federal judge on Friday upheld what has been described as the βpapers, pleaseβ provision of a controversial 2010 Arizona law aimed at illegal immigration.
U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton rejected claims by immigrant-rights groups that a requirement for police to check the immigration status of people they have stopped for other reasons is racially discriminatory. The judge said while it may be that most of the people affected in Arizona are Hispanic, the law itself is racially neutral.
Bolton also spurned a contention that the requirement is pre-empted because only the federal government can enforce immigration laws.
Separately, Bolton upheld another section of the law that requires verification of whether someone who already has been arrested is in the country illegally. She said nothing in that provision expands the rights of police officers to make warrantless arrests.
It βaddresses circumstances after an individual is already in custody,β the judge wrote. βThe law is not a source for state officialsβ arrest or detention powers.β
But Bolton did side with challengers of the law in one respect: She voided laws aimed at day laborers.
That section of the law makes it a crime for someone to stop a motor vehicle on a street and impede traffic in attempting to hire someone to work at another location. It also makes it illegal for someone looking for work to enter such a vehicle.
A federal appeals court already had issued a preliminary injunction against the state enforcing those provisions. Boltonβs ruling, unless overturned on appeal, makes that permanent.
Karen Tumlin, legal director for the National Immigration Law Center, which helped represent the individual Arizonans who sued, said she was disappointed by the ruling.
