The Department of Justice and lawyers for the state of Alabama will face-off in federal court Wednesday over the state’s controversial immigration law.
The DOJ announced earlier this month that it would sue the state over its immigration crackdown, arguing that it is unconstitutional because it interferes with federal policies. The law “attempts to displace the federal government’s exclusive authority to create a systematic scheme for the administration and enforcement of the federal government’s own immigration laws by codifying an inflexible Alabama-specific approach that is, by any definition, “non-cooperative,’” the DOJ wrote.
Alabama’s law, which resembles Arizona’s own controversial law, makes it a crime for an illegal immigrant to be in the state, and additionally criminalizes work by illegal immigrants and renting property to them. The federal government is challenging ten sections of the law, and is asking U.S. District Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn to block parts of the law, which go into effect September 1, until the case is settled.
According to The Huntsville Times, attorneys for the state argue that “the United States here has no occasion to allege that Alabama or its leaders are defying federal law. To the contrary, the entire point of the Alabama statute at issue is to require Alabama and its officials to fully cooperate with federal immigration authorities in the enforcement of federal immigration laws.”
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