Back to the Future? Arizona Returns to the Immigration Enforcement Business
In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Arizona v. United States and invalidated core provisions of Arizona’s controversial immigration enforcement law known as S.B. 1070. Since then, the Arizona legislature has been relatively quiet with respect to immigration legislation. It appears that that may be changing.
The Arizona Republic reports that Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has signed a bill that requires undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes to complete 85 percent of their prison sentences, just as U.S. citizens must, before the Arizona Department of Corrections can release them to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation. Currently, some undocumented inmates can be released to ICE after serving half of their sentences. Ducey has said that the bill is intended to make the criminal-justice system more equitable. But immigrant-rights groups have lambasted it as discriminatory, and say it would inflate the state’s prison population as well as put Arizona back at the center of controversy over states’ efforts to punish undocumented immigrants.
This new law had been the subject of immigrants rights protests and is one of several immigration-related bills under consideration in Arizona.
KJ
KJ