Knockout Punch for Jan Brewer on Immigration
However, with six U.S. Supreme Court judges on her side, then I guess Obama might want to consider again whether to sue Arizona over its immigration law, or indeed whether he visits Arizona himself where cops will soon legally be able to ask the president to show his own birth certificate if he so much as spits on the sidewalk, has a tail light out, or jumps a red light in his motorcade.
CNN: Arizona governor defends immigration law; will meet with president Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer made clear Tuesday she's not worried about a potential legal challenge from the Obama administration over her state's controversial immigration law. "We'll meet you in court," Brewer told CNN' when asked how she would respond if President Barack Obama's Department of Justice decided to challenge the law. "I have a pretty good record of winning in court." The American Civil Liberties Union is currently leading a court challenge. Attorney General Eric Holder, who met with a delegation of police chiefs from Arizona and elsewhere this week to discuss the law, has yet to indicate whether the federal government would file a legal challenge.
Strong Supreme Court precedent in support of Arizona immigration law
On Monday, the ACLU announced a lawsuit challenging the Arizona illegal immigration law on the basis of the “prohibition on unreasonable seizures under the 14th and Fourth Amendments.”
The ACLU, however, might have a difficult time making that case.
In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision in Muehler v. Mena that questioning someone regarding their immigration status is not a violation of Fourth Amendment rights - provided that person is already lawfully detained.
In the wake of a drive-by shooting, Officer Muehler and other members of local law enforcement handcuffed and questioned Iris Mena in connection to the shooting. They did so while executing a search warrant for a safe house which she and members of West Side Locos gang would gather at, most of whom were illegal immigrants. Small wonder, then, that they asked if she was in the country illegally.
Muehler v Mena establishes that “officers did not need reasonable suspicion to ask Mena for her name, date and place of birth, or immigration status.”
Even though this was a gang-related case, “no additional Fourth Amendment justification for inquiring about Mena’s immigration status was required.” If that’s true in California, it’s true in Arizona. This is a strong precedent, with six justices from that unanimous decision remaining on the bench.
Certainly, Arizona law enforcement must take care not to be heavy handed, but the choice between heavy-handed local police action and wide open borders was forced upon the states by past administrations and congresses which punted on illegal immigration rather than do the hard work of governing. Washington Examiner:
Meanwhile, I read a report yesterday from Arizona Central which basically tried to put the frighteners on by talking about a 'mass exodus' of immigrants, and noting how it would hurt immigrants businesses who were servicing immigrants!
It also reported that the last clamp down led to 100,000 leaving, and noted a rise in vacant rental properties which were being rented by legal and illegal immigrants which led to a decline in the rents because of the space created.
It didn't mention any benefits of a lowering of rent which aids the cost of living, or an easing of the burden of unemployment in Arizona, or a reduction of the state costs of keeping immigrants in lifestyles to which Arizonans are themselves unaccustomed of course.
Let me see now, we have over a million illegal immigrants here in the UK, so how much better off would we be if the UK government actually done something about it here instead of talking the talk as opposed to walking the walk like Arizona Governor Jan Brewer.
