Although Judge Bolton’s ruling is not final, it seems likely to halt, at least temporarily, an expanding movement by states to combat illegal immigration by making it a state crime to be an immigrant without legal documents and by imposing new requirements on state and local police officers to enforce immigration law.
“This is a warning to any other jurisdiction” considering a similar law, said Thomas A. Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund , which brought a separate suit against the law that is also before Judge Bolton.
The Arizona law stood out from hundreds of statutes adopted by states in recent years to discourage illegal immigrants. The statute makes it a state crime for immigrants to fail to carry documents proving their legal status, and it requires state police officers to determine the immigration status of anyone they detain for another reason, if there is a “reasonable suspicion” the person is an illegal immigrant.
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