Writ­ten for The Media Consortium

Though Arizona’s SB 1070 went into effect with­out its most con­tro­ver­sial pro­vi­sions, the legislation’s stated intent—attrition through enforcement—is nev­er­the­less gain­ing trac­tion among anti-immigrant leg­is­la­tors across the nation. In the wake of the law’s enact­ment, other states are com­ing out in sup­port of Ari­zona, some devel­op­ing pol­icy mod­eled after SB 1070. Oth­ers even hope to alter the U.S. con­sti­tu­tion to deny “birthright cit­i­zen­ship” to chil­dren of undoc­u­mented immigrants.

Ari­zona stands firm against injunc­tion

After fed­eral judge Susan Bolton blocked numer­ous ele­ments of SB 1070, Ari­zona gov­er­nor Jan Brewer wasted no time and swiftly filed an appeal against the injunc­tion.

Mari­copa County Sher­iff Joe Arpaio, for his part, has assured the pub­lic that he intends to con­tinue enforc­ing state and fed­eral immi­gra­tion laws through “crime sweeps” and immi­gra­tion sta­tus checks. After Arizona’s 287(g) agree­ment expired last year, effec­tively strip­ping local law enforce­ment of the right to detain indi­vid­u­als on sus­pi­cion of their immi­gra­tion sta­tus, Arpaio sim­i­larly refused to com­ply, brazenly main­tain­ing his immi­gra­tion enforce­ment campaign.

Jami­lah King of Col­or­Lines reports that on the day that SB 1070 went into effect, Arpaio and hun­dreds of deputies arrested 50 pro­test­ers before com­plet­ing their 17th immi­gra­tion raid. Those arrested included clergy, jour­nal­ists, and attor­neys. Local civil rights leader Sal­vador Reza – a par­tic­u­larly out­spo­ken critic of Arpaio’s con­tentious enforce­ment tac­tics, was also taken into cus­tody, as was for­mer state Sen. Alfredo Gutierrez.

No cit­i­zen­ship to “anchor babies”

Mean­while, Ari­zona leg­is­la­tors are tak­ing anti-immigrant sen­ti­ment to a new level and com­ing out in favor of poten­tially repeal­ing the 14th amend­ment, which grants cit­i­zen­ship to any­one born in the United States.

At the Wash­ing­ton Inde­pen­dent, Elise Foley reports that Ari­zona sen­a­tors Jon Kyl and John McCain are the lat­est to join the rad­i­cal fac­tion of Repub­li­can Party politi­cians call­ing for con­gres­sional hear­ings to recon­sider the amend­ment. McCain’s new posi­tion is par­tic­u­larly curi­ous given his his­tor­i­cal sup­port of com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform, and past advo­cacy of depor­tees’ Amer­i­can children.

McCain’s about-face may be prompted by the impend­ing elec­tion and, in par­tic­u­lar, the con­sid­er­able pop­u­lar­ity of his Repub­li­can oppo­nent J. D. Hay­worth, who is run­ning on a firm anti-immigrant platform.

Matthew Roth­schild of The Pro­gres­sive argues that the Repub­li­can focus on birthright cit­i­zen­ship is a mali­cious attempt to visit the sins of the father onto the chil­dren. Roth­schild also calls atten­tion to the fact that a whop­ping 94 Repub­li­cans in the House sup­port the extrem­ist effort.

SB 1070 paves the way

Ari­zona has long been a test­ing ground for anti-immigrant mea­sures in the U.S. and SB 1070 is no excep­tion. Now that the new law has gained trac­tion, other states are fol­low­ing suit.

At Talk­ing Points Memo, Christina Bel­lan­toni reports that Vir­ginia Attor­ney Gen­eral Ken Cuc­cinelli ® issued an opin­ion stat­ing that Vir­ginia law enforce­ment, includ­ing state park per­son­nel, have the same author­ity to inves­ti­gate immi­gra­tion sta­tus as Ari­zona police officers.

Writ­ten as an advi­sory let­ter to state Del­e­gate Bob Mar­shall, the opin­ion has gar­nered intense oppo­si­tion – in part because Vir­ginia con­sid­ers offi­cial opin­ions of the attor­ney gen­eral to be laws. Cuc­cinelli rein­forced his opin­ion by fil­ing an ami­cus brief to stand in sol­i­dar­ity with Ari­zona in its fight against the fed­eral government.

He’s not alone, either. Going back to the Wash­ing­ton Inde­pen­dent Foley reports that three other attor­ney gen­er­als and nine states have filed ami­cus briefs in sup­port of Arizona’s new immi­gra­tion law.

Who prof­its when immi­grants go to jail?

While SB 1070 is argued in the courts and debated in the media, Yana Kuchi­noff at Truthout reminds us that 300,000 immi­grants are lan­guish­ing in deten­tion cen­ters under noto­ri­ously poor con­di­tions. More than 100 deaths have been reported in immi­gra­tion deten­tion since 2003, spark­ing inves­ti­ga­tions by Human Rights Watch, Deten­tion Watch, and even the Depart­ment of Home­land Security.

More­over, pri­vate com­pa­nies con­tracted to han­dle the ris­ing num­ber of deten­tions are mak­ing a for­tune on the nation’s bro­ken immi­gra­tion sys­tem. Cor­rec­tions Cor­po­ra­tion of Amer­ica, the largest pri­vate immi­gra­tion detainer in the coun­try, has made record prof­its since 2003 by billing the fed­eral gov­ern­ment an esti­mated $11 mil­lion per month and cut­ting costs at the expense of detainees’ health and well-being. Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­nies like Ever­Com are also prof­it­ing from deten­tion, charg­ing immi­grants in deten­tion as much as $17.34 for a 15-minute phone call.

The irony of our dys­func­tional immi­gra­tion sys­tem, Kuchi­noff con­cludes, is that the peo­ple who end up spend­ing the most time in deten­tion, are those with the strongest claims for stay­ing in the U.S.

This post fea­tures links to the best inde­pen­dent, pro­gres­sive report­ing about immi­gra­tion by mem­bers of The Media Con­sor­tium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Dias­pora for a com­plete list of arti­cles on immi­gra­tion issues, or fol­low us on Twit­ter. And for the best pro­gres­sive report­ing on crit­i­cal econ­omy, envi­ron­ment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse . This is a project of The Media Con­sor­tium, a net­work of lead­ing inde­pen­dent media outlets.

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