Arizona is ending the practice of forcing police officers to demand people they suspect of being undocumented immigrants to hand over their papers. This move has resulted in what was once the most feared immigration law losing its bite.
The announcement, made yesterday, came about due to a settlement reached with immigrants’ rights groups, including the National Immigration Law Center. Six years ago, the groups decided to sue after the measure, known by the legislative shorthand of SB 1070, was passed. Business leaders, immigration activists and liberal city governments were infuriated by the 2010 bill. It led Gary Pierce, the Arizona Corporation Commissioner of the Los Angeles City Council, to threaten to renegotiate power agreements to put an end to Los Angeles receiving power from any generation in Arizona.
Mark Brnovitch, the Arizona Attorney General, says that the provision in the law that instructs police to investigate anyone they believe may be an undocumented immigrant, an element that immigrants’ rights groups feared would result in racial profiling, can now be ignored as part of the settlement. Arizona will also have to pay the plaintiffs’ attorney fees of $1.4 million.
The National Immigration Law Center’s legal director, Karen Tumlin, says that all the state’s law enforcement officers will now have clarity for the first time since 2010 that no one can now be detained under SB 1070 on the basis of their immigration status alone.