Norton Calls for Immediate Injuctive Relief from Arizona Law & Immigration Reform (4/26/2010)

Norton Calls for Immediate Injunctive Relief from Arizona Law and Immigration Reform

WASHINGTON, DC - Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today said that new Arizona law, aimed at identifying undocumented immigrants, "must not be modeled elsewhere and is so dangerously unconstitutional in recapturing long-discredited discriminatory laws that an injunction should be immediately sought and granted before more harm is done." Norton's D.C. Congressional Latino Council, months ago, reported their concerns regarding the District's participation in another federal program, the Secure Communities Initiative with the Department of Homeland Security, which they believe could lead to profiling here, and the Congresswoman is seeking clarification.

Norton, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said that there is no escaping congressional responsibility for repeated congressional failures to attend the essential national responsibility to fairly regulate entry into the country and exclude undocumented immigrants. The Arizona law is a "clarion call for long-awaited immigration reform," she said.

"Arizona and other western states have every reason to feel unfairly burdened," Norton said. Drug and human smugglers have taken advantage of their border location, and desperate undocumented immigrants in Arizona and other western states have found entry points to and through their states. "However, we know too much from our own history, some of it recent, not to be aware that permitting police to act on suspicion is an inherently arbitrary violation of the Fourth Amendment, and quickly becomes a license to act on intuition and to discriminate." She said that the Arizona law also has a novel provision that "punishes law-abiding police officers as well by making them liable if they fail in enforcing the new law. Arizona police already have a tough reputation for enforcing existing laws against undocumented immigrants. This may be a tough year to do immigration reform, but the delay experienced by many immigrants, who have been in this country for years, and the desperation signaled by the new Arizona law make further delay untenable," Norton said.