Governor Jan Brewer has signed into law several
amendments to Arizona’s controversial new immigration statute, after a week of intense negative publicity and threatened constitutional challenges and boycotts.
As we reported
last week, Arizona’s immigration statute gives local law enforcement broad authority to check the legal status of any person reasonably suspected of being in the United States without authorization and criminalizes unlawful presence by non-citizens. The law also makes it a crime to fail to carry documentation of immigration status.
Amendments signed into law on Friday seek to narrow the new police powers to some extent. Under the amendments, law enforcement officers will be permitted to check an individual’s immigration status only when making a “lawful stop, detention or arrest” in the enforcement of a local, municipal or state law. As originally enacted, the Arizona law would have allowed police to ask for proof of immigration status whenever they had any “lawful contact” with an individual suspected of being unlawfully present.
In addition, the amendments prohibit law enforcement from considering an individual’s race, color or national origin when determining whether there is a reasonable suspicion to believe that the individual is unlawfully present. Previously, the law would have allowed police to consider race, color or national origin as long as those factors were not the sole basis for the suspicion of unlawful presence.
The amendments also reduce the penalties for failure to carry immigration documents.
Despite these changes, opponents of the law held protests throughout the country over the weekend and advocacy groups continue to prepare legal challenges. Fragomen is closely monitoring the new law and will issue additional Client Alerts as developments occur. If you have any questions about the Arizona law, please contact your designated Fragomen professional.