Judicial activism against Arizona

This article states that U.S. District Judge Susan R. Bolton, has blocked critical aspects of Arizona’s immigration enforcement law. And, because of this situation, this will cause efforts to take more action and work harder in order to find a solution to Obama administration’s unwillingness to take action on this issue. According to a recent Quinnipiac poll, 55 percent of back the Arizona law and 58 percent disapprove of Obama immigration policies. Also, a Pew Research Center poll shows that 63 percent think immigration reform is important and only 36 percent back the Justice Department’s suit against Arizona. Judge Bolton ruled, “It is not in the public interest for Arizona to enforce preempted laws. But, Attorney General Eric H. Holder has suggested that this is a deceptive statement because, if Arizona had passed a law that defined U.S. citizenship, then federal supremacy would have applied, but the case did not deal with pre-empted law but with parallel enforcement. The law did not deal with defining who broke the laws, but what to do when police apprehend these criminals. Another case like this (Gonzales v. City of Peoria, 1983), states that, “although the regulation of immigration is unquestionably an exclusive federal power, it is clear that this power does not preempt every state activity affecting aliens." The court then stated that, “federal law does not preclude local enforcement of the criminal provisions of federal immigration law, and that concurrent enforcement is authorized when they do not impair federal regulatory interests." This case took a notion that the federal government would be immediately irreparably harmed by Arizona identifying previously detained illegals is unsustainable. And, another Supreme Court case (Muehler v. Mena, 2005); ruled that police could question suspects detained for other crimes about their immigration status even if they had no reason to believe they were illegals. But, the court overturned this and said that this is a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

This is related to Federalism because it is a classic example of the Supremacy Clause. The Supremacy clause states that the national government is supreme over the state governments, if constitutional. This article shows an example of how national government is more superior over the state governments by not allowing Arizona to pass the immigration enforcement law. And, it shows that the Supreme Court interprets that law and how to handle it by not letting them pass the law, which in the long run could help the state and the country.

This issue is important because the immigration numbers are increasing more and more every year. And, the article simply stated how the police would handle such people, not to assume that they are immigrants. The national government seemed to have called the wrong notion because law enforcement is a state power and the Supreme Court denied this power to Arizona. This article shows unconstitutional powers.