Obama and Mexico Sue Arizona Over Immigration

Anyone who has bothered to read Arizona’s new Immigration Law, SB 1070, knows that:

* Arizona is merely trying to administer federal immigration laws that the Obama administration refuses to enforce;
* SB 1070 is not racist because Arizona police are explicitly forbidden to use racial profiling. It requires police investigating another incident or crime to ask people about their immigration status only if there’s a “reasonable suspicion” they’re in the country illegally.

But the truth has not stopped President Obama, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and Mexico President Felipe Calderon from lying about the law and demonizing Arizona. [Read a simple Fact Sheet on the law, HERE, or SB 1070 HERE. It's only 16 pages!]

Now, both Mexico and the Obama administration are suing Arizona!

This past Tuesday, June 22, 2010, lawyers for Mexico submitted a legal brief in support of a lawsuit challenging the law. Mexico is asking a federal court in Arizona to declare the state’s new immigration law unconstitutional.

That is so precious of Mexico — a country with a draconian policy on illegal immigrants, who when caught are immediately deported. Meanwhile, Mexican drug gangs have taken over whole swaths of southern Arizona, making 4.3 million acres dangerous and off-limits to Americans.
As for the Obama administration, an editorial in Investors Business Daily on June 21, 2010, “Obamnesty First, Security Second?” says:

Every nation has a right to protect its borders, and our commander in chief has a duty to protect ours. Refusal to do so for political reasons is unconscionable. Our border states should not remain exposed to the escalating violence of a Mexican drug war that has already claimed the life of one Arizona rancher.

The murderers of Robert Krentz escaped to a protected pronghorn antelope area that the Interior Department of Secretary Ken Salazar had placed off limits to U.S. border patrol agents in order to protect endangered species. So unserious is the administration about protecting the border that it has placed off limits some 4.3 million acres of wilderness area that has become both a haven and a highway for illegal aliens, drug smugglers, human traffickers and potential terrorists.

Arizona is now the kidnapping capital of the United States, and Phoenix has the second-largest kidnapping problem in the world, just behind Mexico City. Claremont Institute fellows William J. Bennett and Seth Leibsohn, writing in National Review, report that someone is kidnapped every 35 hours in Phoenix. According to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, kidnapping in Arizona increased 402% between 2004 and 2008, with almost 70% of the kidnapping cases submitted for prosecution involving illegal immigrants.

This is part of a much bigger crime picture. The Center for Immigration Studies reports that while illegal aliens make up 9% of the Arizona population, they are responsible for 22% of the felonies in the state and they constitute 11% of the state prison population.

Instead of securing the border, the Obama administration is preparing to sue Arizona for doing the feds’ job by passing SB 1070, which mimics existing federal law. The irony here is that the Department of Homeland Security has Memorandums of Agreement (MOAs) with around 70 state and local law enforcement agencies to participate in program 287(g) partnerships to enforce federal law. Nine of these jurisdictions are in Arizona and all of the agreements were inked while Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was Arizona governor. Last October, Napolitano said these “agreements promote public safety by prioritizing the identification and removal of dangerous criminal aliens and ensure consistency and stronger federal oversight of state and local immigration law enforcement efforts across the nation.”

Under these agreements, local law enforcement is trained and authorized to enforce federal immigration laws by arresting criminal illegal aliens. Nationwide the program has ID’d and processed for removal more than 110,000 criminal aliens since January 2006.

The Obama administration wants to sue Arizona for doing what it authorized Arizona to do. No court should allow that.

In a statement issued Friday after it was confirmed the administration was preparing to sue, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer called Obama’s decision “outrageous” but “not surprising.” “Our federal government should be using its legal resources to fight illegal immigration, not the law-abiding citizens of Arizona,” Arizona’s governor said. We concur.

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