After Monday’s Supreme Court ruling Arizona v. The United States was released, President Obama and his Department of Justice went about undermining both Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and the remaining provision of the law that was not overturned,
To show his significant distrust of Arizona immigration policy, President Obama released a statement warning Arizona citizens to be mindful of potential law enforcement abuse, and the DOJ set up a “hotline” so that these potential civil rights violations could be reported.
In the Court’s decision, three of the four provisions of Arizona’s controversial 2010 immigration law, SB 1070, were overturned.
In a statement released by the White House, Obama said he remains “concerned about the practical impact of the remaining provision of the Arizona law that requires local law enforcement officials to check the immigration status of anyone they even suspect to be here illegally… Going forward, we must ensure that Arizona law enforcement officials do not enforce this law in a manner that undermines the civil rights of Americans as the Court’s decision recognizes.”
To that end, Obama’s Justice Department set up a hotline for the public to report potential civil rights concerns and violations regarding the implementation of the Arizona law, presumably through racial profiling. By setting up this hotline, the administration is practically “baiting people,” as Brewer told Fox’s Greta Van Susteren, to file suits against Arizona, subverting normal civil rights proceedings and applying them directly to the federal government.
In response, Brewer told CNN’s John King that Obama’s procedures are “another assault on the state of Arizona. It began with [the Obama administration] downplaying our border problem, and then not securing [the border], suing the state of Arizona for trying to protect the people of Arizona and of America, and doing backdoor amnesty, and now rescinding only Arizona’s ability to use the 287 (g) [which allows federal authorities and local authorities to enforce immigration law together, including allowing local authorities to use the federal identification database of illegal immigrants]. Outrageous.”
King suggested that Obama’s Justice Department sees this law as “somehow nefarious and they have to hold up their civil rights because they don’t think [Arizona] will.”
Three hours after the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision to uphold the “papers please” portion of the law, the Justice Department “arbitrarily singles out Arizona and sent a bomb, if you will, across our bow and made Arizona, once again, a target,” said Brewer.
Obama has come under heat recently for his irresponsible immigration reforms which serve only to turn immigration into a political issue during an election year, making future reforms more difficult.
Obama’s attempts to make an example out of Arizona highlight not only his trust issues with state sovereignty, but again reveals the president’s power hungry measures to concentrate control in the federal government.
Having no real immigration reforms to present to the county, the president merely attempts to discourage the states from deviating from the president’s practice of general lawlessness and political pandering. Arizona’s attempts to enforce federal immigration law serves as a reminder to president Obama that he has failed in protecting states’ rights.
