Arizona seeks reinstatement of illegals law

PHOENIX — Arizona asked an appeals court Thursday to lift a judge’s order blocking most of the state’s immigration law as Phoenix filled with protesters, including about 50 who were arrested for confronting police officers.

Republican Gov. Jan Brewer called U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton’s Wednesday decision to halt the law “a bump in the road,” and the state appealed that ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Thursday.

Bolton decided Wednesday that the state can’t mandate that police make a “reasonable attempt” to determine whether a person is legally in the U.S. and then detain him if there is “suspicion” that he isn’t.

The appeals court could hear arguments over the law in mid-September, according to a request for expedited proceedings submitted by Brewer. Arizona would have two weeks to file its first brief under the proposed schedule.

The schedule should be speeded up because the barred provisions “were critical to address serious criminal, environmental, and economic problems Arizona has been suffering as a consequence of illegal immigration and the lack of effective enforcement activity by the federal government,” Arizona said in a copy of its appeals court filing that it provided.

“America is not going to sit back and allow the ongoing federal failures to continue,” Brewer said Thursday in a statement.

“We are a nation of laws, and we believe they need to be enforced.”

Outside the state Capitol, hundreds of protesters began marching at dawn, gathering in front of the federal courthouse where Bolton issued her ruling Wednesday. They marched on to the office of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has made a crackdown on illegal immigration one of his signature issues.

At least 23 demonstrators were arrested after blocking the entrance and beating on the large steel doors leading to the Maricopa County jail in downtown Phoenix. Sheriff’s deputies in riot gear opened the doors and waded out into the crowd, hauling off those who wouldn’t move.

Dozens of others were arrested throughout the day trying to cross a police line, entering closed-off areas or sitting in the street and refusing to leave. Former state Sen. Alfredo Gutierrez, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2002, was among them. A photographer for the Arizona Republic also was detained.

Marchers chanted “Sheriff Joe, we are here, we will not live in fear,” and in the crowd was a drummer wearing a papier-mache Sheriff Joe head and dressed in prison garb.

In Phoenix, demonstrators had promised nonviolent civil disobedience, and they gathered in front of the sheriff’s office by the hundreds, blocking traffic and swarming around several cars caught in the protest.

Police moved in to try to allow the drivers to leave, as the crowd shouted, “We will not comply.”

Over the next hour, the crowd surged, chanted and yelled. They then moved on to the jail.

As Arpaio held a news conference, he got a telephone call, and he told the caller: “OK, we’re going to divert our deputies down in front of the jail. ... What you do, anybody that resists, you put ’em in our jail. We’re going to lock ’em up.”

Then he turned to reporters: “As I said, we’re not going to allow our jails to be held hostage by these activists, so they’re going to jail.

“And if we have to put 200 in there, that’s where they’re going,” he said, adding that the sweeps - in which his deputies and volunteers fan out in immigrant neighborhoods, stop people for sometimes minor violations and then check their immigration status - would continue.

“My deputies will arrest them and put them in pink underwear,” Arpaio said, referring to one of his methods of punishment for prisoners. “Count on it.”

Activists, armed with video cameras and aided by others listening to police scanners, roamed the county’s neighborhoods, saying they were ready to document any deputies harassing Hispanics.

In Tucson, between 50 and 100 people gathered at a downtown street corner to protest and defend the new law Thursday morning. Tucson police spokesman Linda Galindo said one man was arrested for threatening people in the other group.

In Los Angeles, about 200 protesters invaded a busy intersection west of downtown. Police waited more than three hours before declaring it an unlawful assembly. Most of the demonstrators left peacefully, but about a dozen, linked together with plastic pipes and chains, lay in the street in a circle as an act of civil disobedience. Officer Bruce Borihanh said police were cutting the protesters’ chains and taking them away to be booked for failure to disperse.

The protesters chanted, “These are our streets.”

In New York City, about 300 immigrant advocates gathered near the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan.

New York City Councilman Jumaane Williams, a first-generation American, told the crowd: “We won a slight battle in Arizona, we’ve got to continue with the war.”

Since Wednesday’s ruling, Bolton has received thousands of phone calls and e-mails. Some were positive, but others were “from people venting and who have expressed their displeasure in a perverted way,” said David Gonzales, the U.S. marshal for Arizona.

Gonzales said his agents are taking some of the threats to Bolton seriously. He wouldn’t say how many there were or whether any threats were from recognized hate groups.

He refused to discuss any extra security measures, which U.S. marshals routinely provide federal judges.

Bolton indicated that the government has a good chance at succeeding in its argument that federal immigration law trumps state law. But the key sponsor of Arizona’s law, Republican Rep. Russell Pearce, said the judge was wrong and predicted that the state will ultimately win the case.

In her temporary injunction, Bolton delayed the most contentious provisions of the law, including a section that required officers to check a person’s immigration status while enforcing other laws.

But she allowed police to enforce the law’s bans on blocking vehicle traffic when seeking or offering day-labor services and a revision to the smuggling ban that lets officers stop drivers if they suspect motorists have broken traffic laws.

Bolton also let officers enforce a new prohibition on driving or harboring illegal aliens in furtherance of their illegal presence.

Opponents of the law said the ruling sends a strong message to other states hoping to replicate the law.

But a lawmaker in Utah said the state will likely take up a similar law anyway.

“The ruling ... should not be a reason for Utah to not move forward,” said Utah state Rep. Carl Wimmer, a Republican from Herriman City, who said he plans to co-sponsor a bill similar to Arizona’s next year and wasn’t surprised it was blocked. “For too long the states have cowered in the corner because of one ruling by one federal judge.” Information for this article was contributed by Bob Christie, Michelle Price, Paul Davenport, Amanda Lee Myers, Jacques Billeaud and Sara Kugler Frazier of The Associated Press; by William McQuillen of Bloomberg News; and by Nicholas Riccardi and Anna Gorman of the Los Angeles Times.