Sigh. You're repeating yourself and regurgitating the ruling.
I think it's a legally valid ruling.
As far as I can tell it is only now that you are making this interpretation.
It's only now that I understood you to be making the claim that state police can make a determination of immigration status.
Basically, the judge's argument is saying that the law as written means this:
If during a detention you have reason to believe someone is here illegally, you need to make a determination if they are here legally or not. If the person has an AZ driver's license or immigration papers, they are here legally. If you arrest someone, you need to make a determination if they are here legally or not. This means sending every person through the federal system.
Basically I agree. It says before you release someone arrested, you have to make a determination of their immigration status. And that means sending an inquiry to federal authorities to make that determination since no state authority can make that determination.
The part in italics is an invention of the judge and the Obama administration. The argument is that since the law didn't explicitly state how that determination would be made, it must mean putting everybody through the federal system.
It's not a recent invention. There's a wealth of codified law and case law that supports the fact that determining immigration status is something only federal authorities can do. I hadn't realized before that you weren't aware of this.
The fact that the law accepts an AZ driver's license under just one sentence ago doesn't mean that it's acceptable in the next sentence.
Sorry, I have to repeat myself again. A driver's license can be acceptable for getting rid of probable cause and not triggering an inquiry to federal authorities. It cannot be used by state authorities to make determination of immigration status.
And even though the legislature could have explicitly stated that everybody needs to be checked by the Feds but didn't make that statement, the court must assume this is the case.
The courts are only assuming that the second sentence should be read as written (and not presumed to be changed as was the first sentence). It does explicitly state that anyone who is arrested has to have his immigration status determined (something that can only be done by federal authorities) before being released.
And even though the papers filed by the State say that's not the case, the court will not believe them.
* During the debates and explanations by the legislature, nobody ever said they intended to send every arrested person through the federal system.
During the debates and explanations by the legislature and governor, plenty of misinformation was (and continues to be) bandied about. But the sentence that said anyone who is arrested has to have his status determined (something that only federal authorities can do) before being released.
* No jurisdiction anywhere in Arizona has done the above. They only send those for whom they cannot find proper documentation.
A good reason to enjoin these parts of the law--to keep it that way.
* In their court filing, Arizona explicitly stated this was not their intention.
And the court rejected that argument.
* There is a reasonable interpretation of the law as written where one could argue that the aforementioned documentation (driver's license, immigration papers) would be sufficient after an arrest since they are sufficient before an arrest.
I disagree. There is a difference between what it takes to have probable cause (like not having a driver's license or other documents) and making a determination of status, something that states do not have the authority to do.
* It would be patently ridiculous for the state to do what the court claims because it would last all of about a day until the Feds requested an injunction to stop the practice.
I agree that it would be ridiculous. That's why the federal government requested and won an injunction at minus one day.
You really need to give that claim a rest. Everybody knows that the Feds provide limited enforcement.
I've dealt with this argument before. (You should probably read through the thread.) Since enforcement resources aren't infinite, any enforcement policy can be called "limited" (even the policy Arizona is attempting to establish).
Apparently what many people think they know is the false idea that the federal government doesn't have a successful enforcement policy in place. Again, enforcement levels are at all time record highs. Also, since they focus on getting rid of criminal rather than non criminal illegals, I think its partly responsible for reduction of crime.
Nobody is actually arguing that the billions of dollars spent on immigration is really spent on lobster dinners to absolute exclusion of all enforcement. The fact that they refer to the system for checking immigration status is an implicit acknowledgement of enforcement.
If you mean that nobody is claiming that the federal government doesn't enforce its laws at all, you're wrong. Again, Arizona attorney John Bourna said, "A law unenforced is no law at all." That doesn't work if what he really meant was "An inadequately enforced law (even though enforcement is at record levels) is no law at all."
You only discredit yourself by continually bringing up this issue. "Not enforcing immigration law" is a euphemism for not adequately enforcing the law.
Nope. Bourna could not possibly have meant that. Someone on one of the threads in this forum said that if the federal government doesn't want to enforce its law they should just repeal all their immigration laws. (In an attempt to make the federal government's position seem absurd, I suppose.)
Again, this doesn't work if they had honestly said, "We disagree with the federal government's policy on enforcement of immigration laws."
And the fact is, the Arizona law would undermine enforcement. It would tie up a bureaucracy verifying a bunch of documents on non-criminal illegal aliens at the cost of going after the criminal ones.
Seriously? There are numerous jurisdictions where illegals are arrested for other crimes, then released. What Arizona is saying is, "Look, if you've arrested somebody and it looks like they are here illegally, meaning no ID, not immigration papers, no birth certificate, etc, then check with the Feds to see if they are here legally. If not, then deport them."
That's the status quo without SB 1070. Do you think SB 1070 wouldn't change anything?
You're just playing semantic games.
No I'm not. You seem to be missing an important legal distinction: between what it takes to have probable cause to arrest someone suspected of being illegal (such as lacking documents) and what constitutes making a determination of status. States cannot make a determination of status.
The court's claim is that Arizona intended to ask the Feds to make a determination on every single person arrested. Again, I challenge you to provide evidence that this is what Arizona intended.
Primarily, the evidence is the plain language of the law. It says that anyone arrested has to have his status determined before he can be released.
There's numerous times people have claimed that the federal government doesn't do enough enforcement. Since they've been prosecuting and deporting record levels (and even processing huge numbers of probable illegals to determine status and looking for those with criminal convictions), what else could it mean to do "more" enforcement but to flood federal authorities with huge numbers of requests for determination of status?
Hell, show me in this thread where people made that interpretation before they heard it in the courts.
I don't think anyone anticipated misreading a law that calls for determination of status not to mean sending a request for that determination to federal authorities. It 's been all over the news for weeks now, and most news stories did characterize the law as requiring that the status be determined (at first it was for anyone police came into contact with, and then only those they arrest).
It's painfully obvious that you are against this law, and you are simply looking for ways to confirm your bias.
That's an ad hominem argument. My motivations do not change the arguments I have made.
