PHOENIX — Immigrants’ rights groups filed a lawsuit on Thursday challenging the Arizona State Legislature’s passage of HCR 2060, a ballot referral that would create a state immigration legal scheme and permit enforcement of immigration laws by local law enforcement. The lawsuit, filed by the ACLU of Arizona and Coppersmith Brockelman in Maricopa County Superior Court, challenges HCR 2060 as violating the single subject requirement in the Arizona Constitution. The Plaintiffs in the case are Poder in Action, Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, and Phoenix Legal Action Network.
HCR 2060 threatens the civil and human rights of immigrants across the state and places advocacy and legal service organizations and the communities they serve at risk. Following are comments from the Plaintiffs:
“Arizona law enforcement has a long history of discriminatory policing,” said Viridiana Hernandez, Executive Director of Poder in Action. “This type of law would only embolden Arizona law enforcement agencies to engage in behavior that violates the civil rights of people living, working, and traveling in the State. Not only is HCR 2060 unconstitutional, but it does nothing to keep our communities safe. We are joining this lawsuit because we will not allow our immigrant community to once more be used to gain political points.”
“If it were to become law, HCR 2060 would effectively create a shadow detention and removal system that is directly contradictory to federal law, and it would be nearly impossible for our organization to provide those legal and social services to people facing deportation in Arizona,” said Laura St. John, Legal Director of the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project. “Additionally, the measure draws on components of both criminal and immigration law and is much too complicated to be distilled down to a ballot measure. If this proposal is on the ballot and passes, it will have an unfathomably negative impact on our communities, on migrants, and on the state of Arizona.”
“By threatening our immigrant neighbors, HCR2060 threatens the strength and fabric of all our communities across Arizona,” said Rekha Nair, Executive Director of the Phoenix Legal Action Network (PLAN). “The racial profiling that this ballot measure encourages will impact not only PLAN’s immigrant clients but all Arizonans who don't look 'American' enough, because it allows local law enforcement to arrest anyone they suspect entered Arizona unlawfully, in some cases up to seven years after entry. It also allows Arizona to deport immigrants with pending applications for legal immigration status. For some of PLAN’s clients who must remain in the United States to get legal status, like asylum seekers, survivors of trafficking, or abused, abandoned, or neglected immigrant children, they may lose their only opportunity to be safe.”
View the full complaint here.
