June 28, 2011
A federal judge has blocked the most controversial parts of a tough new Georgia immigration law that was to have taken effect Friday, but left most of the law’s provisions intact. The judge, Thomas W. Thrash Jr. of Federal District Court, issued a temporary injunction against two sections, saying the state was attempting to write immigration laws that would pre-empt federal statute.
Civil liberties groups argued Monday that Georgia’s law cracking down on illegal immigration should not take effect until a lawsuit challenging it as unconstitutional is resolved, and a judge said he likely would rule on that request before the law takes effect.
As if Arizona, with its SB 1070 law that cost $750 million and turned the state into a pariah wasn’t enough. As if Georgia, with a new immigration law that criminalized all individuals who harbored or transported undocumented immigrants wasn’t enough. As if Indiana’s not one, but two new anti-immigration laws weren’t enough.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Southern Poverty Law Center, and several other groups are taking Georgia’s new “show-me-your-papers” law to court, filing a federal lawsuit yesterday to halt provisions that would allow local law enforcement to check for immigration papers and require many businesses to do the same with employees.
June 3, 2011
Several civil rights groups filed a lawsuit Thursday seeking to halt Georgia’s stringent new immigration law that would allow law enforcement to check the legal status of criminal suspects and force many businesses to do the same with potential employees.
June 2, 2011
The American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia and other rights groups are preparing to file a lawsuit challenging Georgia’s immigration law, which seeks to go after undocumented immigrants. The state chapter of the ACLU said in a statement Wednesday that the groups plan to hold a news conference Thursday to discuss the suit.
May 26, 2011
Indiana’s new immigration law includes unlawful provisions that would allow local police to interfere with federal authorities and arrest immigrants — documented or not — for reasons that have little to do with criminal activity, one civil rights group says.
Eleven Spanish-speaking men rise reluctantly from wooden benches in the U.S. Immigration Court in Denver. On instructions from a court interpreter, they raise their right hands and in unison they swear to tell la verdad, the truth.
Haitians who received a special American immigration status after last year’s earthquake will be allowed an additional year and a half to live and work in the United States while their country struggles to recover, the Obama administration announced on Tuesday.
Just less than 7 percent of people booked into San Diego County jails were identified as illegal immigrants, according to figures released by the federal government covering a 21-month period between May 2009 and February 2011.
