A law passed by Alabama legislators to curb illegal immigration has
been permanently blocked by the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ), which
announced this week that the measure “punished immigrant children for
exercising their constitutional right to go to school,” among other
things.
The law made it a state crime to be an undocumented alien and made it
illegal for them to work in the state. It also allowed police to detain
those suspected of being in the country illegally, made it a crime to
rent a house or apartment to an illegal immigrant and criminalized
contracts with illegal aliens. Additionally, new public school students
were required to provide immigration information to enroll.
The DOJ followed the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) footsteps in quickly filing a lawsuit
to block Alabama’s law shortly after it passed in 2011. Like the ACLU,
the DOJ accused Alabama of crossing a constitutional line, asserting
that the law would lead to “the harassment and detention of foreign
visitors, legal immigrants and even U.S. citizens who may not be able to
readily prove their lawful status.” The feds also claimed the measure
would burden children by demanding that students prove their lawful
presence, which in turn, discourages parents from enrolling them in
school.
Years of litigation and hundreds of thousands of dollars later,
Alabama has lost the battle against the federal government to control
illegal immigration within its boundaries. This week a federal court in
the northern district of Alabama entered a final judgment resolving
the lengthy conflict and permanently prohibiting the state from
enforcing most of the provisions in its 2011 law. A group of open
borders organizations had also joined the DOJ in the legal battle so the
state was clearly at a disadvantage.
Besides claiming that Alabama’s law is unconstitutional, the DOJ said
it threatened to impose significant burdens on federal and state
agencies by diverting their resources away from dangerous criminal
aliens and other high-profile criminal activity. The federal government
is already making the nation safer, according to the DOJ attorney
handling the case, by “aggressively prosecuting and deporting criminal
aliens in record numbers.”
Alabama’s law would have diverted the attention of state and local
authorities from violent criminals to ordinary families, the DOJ
prosecutor says, adding that it also would have “forced parents to
uproot their sons and daughters from their home.” Additionally, the law
would have punished immigrant children for exercising their
constitutional right to go to school, according to the DOJ.
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Wednesday, November 27, 2013
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