{"id":22745,"date":"2020-04-03T04:46:17","date_gmt":"2020-04-03T08:46:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/?p=22745"},"modified":"2020-04-03T04:46:21","modified_gmt":"2020-04-03T08:46:21","slug":"supreme-court-states-immigration-immigrationreform-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2020\/04\/03\/supreme-court-states-immigration-immigrationreform-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Re-Opens Door to States’ Role in Immigration Enforcement. They Should Run, Not Walk, Through It"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In March, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Kansas v. Garcia.<\/em> This ruling may be one\nof most significant on the states\u2019 role in enforcing America\u2019s immigration laws\nin nearly a decade.  Instead of tying the\nstates\u2019 hands like previous rulings, the Court held they are free to dramatically\nback up federal immigration officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Arizona v. United\nStates<\/em> in 2012, the Supreme Court struck down a portion of Arizona’s\nimmigration enforcement law, Senate Bill (SB) 1070.  In the opinion authored by Justice Anthony\nKennedy, the Court\u2019s majority used the doctrines of federal supremacy over\nimmigration and federal preemption of state law to hold that states are\nhelpless and powerless to supplement federal law or action with their own.  It determined that state involvement in\nhelping to support the very immigration laws Congress had themselves enacted\ncould somehow be an \u201cobstacle to the full purposes and objectives of Congress.\u201d\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In practice, this judicial hair-splitting in the Arizona\ncase over what is preempted and therefore forbidden versus what is not\npreempted and therefore allowed was incoherent and resulted in law enforcement\ncautiously stepping back from immigration enforcement and not even doing what\nthe Court permitted.  Since the Supreme\nCourt\u2019s ruling in Arizona v the U.S.<\/em>,\nlitigation filed by the open-borders crowd has claimed any state or local\nimmigration enforcement activity is federally preempted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was exactly the kind of bewildering argument that ultimately brought Kansas v. Garcia<\/em> before the Supreme Court.  In this case, the State of Kansas charged and convicted three illegal aliens under the state\u2019s identity theft statutes for using stolen or false Social Security numbers on state and federal tax forms to fraudulently obtain employment.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both the trial court and the Kansas Court of Appeals upheld their convictions, but the Kansas Supreme Court threw them out, relying on the Arizona v. U.S. <\/em>to find state law was federally preempted. According to the Kansas Supreme Court, the State was preempted by the provision of federal law which states information on a federal I-9 employment form cannot be used for other purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 5-4 opinion, with Justice Samuel Alito writing for\nthe majority, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Kansas Supreme Court holding\nthe convictions should stand.  The court\nfurther noted that the alternative would have been to make I-9\u2019s effectively\ninto get-out-of-jail-free cards, enabling illegal aliens to immunize themselves\nagainst state prosecution even for crimes having nothing specifically to do\nwith immigration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unsurprisingly, open-borders advocates were dismayed that the Court  gave<\/a> states greater rights to prosecute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach rightly praised<\/a> the ruling as a victory for both states\u2019 rights and immigration enforcement that \u201cwill be quoted many times in the future.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea that sanctuary policies which impede federal law are constitutional while policies that enforce federal law are not has been absurdly contradictory. With the ruling in Kansas v. Garcia<\/em>, the Supreme Court has steered things in a more logical and coherent direction.  As Dale Wilcox of the Immigration Reform Law Institute says<\/a>, \u201c[t]he Court was correct to recognize that though states may not hinder, they are free to help.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Court\u2019s ruling doesn\u2019t require states to enact any new\nlaw.  Like Kansas’s ID theft statute,\nstates have plenty of their own laws of general application on the books\nalready.  The Court ruling held they can\nuse them, regardless of whether they have impact immigration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read the Supreme Court’s opinion in Kansas v. Garcia<\/em> by clicking HERE<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In March, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Kansas v. Garcia. This ruling may be one of most significant on the states\u2019 role in enforcing America\u2019s immigration laws in nearly a decade.  Instead of tying the states\u2019 hands like previous rulings, the Court held they are free to dramatically back up federal immigration<\/p>\n

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