Trump administration moves to dismiss lawsuits against Iowa and Oklahoma over immigration enforcement laws
The Biden administration challenged the constitutionality of several state immigration enforcement laws.
Hannah Fingerhut for the Associated Press reports that the Trump administration yesterday moved to dismiss lawsuits against Iowa and Oklahoma brought by the Biden administration, which challenged the states’ laws making it a crime for noncitizen to be in the state if they are unlawfully in the United States. The Iowa and Oklahoma laws were similar to the one in effect in Texas.
The Iowa Attorney General applauded the dismissal of the lawsuit challenging the Iowa law.
The challenges to the state immigration enforcement laws appeared to have merit. As Mitch Smith of the New York Times reported,
“[a] federal district judge blocked Iowa from enforcing its law last year in separate challenges from the Justice Department and an immigrant rights group, the Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice. . . . [T]he three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit kept in place the injunction in the Justice Department’s challenge . . . . The panel was composed of jurists appointed by Republican presidents.”
The state of Oklahoma is appealing an injunction entered barring its immigration enforcement law from going into effect.
The Trump administration thus abandoned cases in which federal courts had enjoined enforcement of state immigration enforcement laws.
KJ
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