Supreme Court blocks Florida from enforcing immigration law, upholding Miami judge
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday blocked Florida’s enforcement of a new state immigration law that allowed authorities to arrest undocumented migrants who enter the state, upholding an injunction by a federal judge in Miami.
The high court’s ruling will prevent Florida authorities from enforcing the law while immigration rights groups challenge it in federal court.
The court’s one-sentence order denying a request for a stay of the injunction by the state attorney general provided no explanation. There were no dissents. But the justices seem to be signaling that the federal government, not states, has the sole authority to make and enforce immigration laws.
The ACLU, which represents the immigrant groups, praised the court’s ruling. The decision “affirms what the Constitution demands — that immigration enforcement is a federal matter and that no one should be stripped of their liberty without due process,” Bacardi Jackson, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, said in a statement.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen M. Williams temporarily blocked enforcement of the state law with a preliminary injunction in late April — then last month held Florida Attorney James Uthmeier in contempt for defying her order.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld her injunction, saying it was likely that federal immigration laws pre-empt the state law. The state appealed that ruling to the full 11th Circuit, whose decision is pending and would likely end up before the Supreme Court again.
In Florida’s emergency application to the Supreme Court, Uthmeier said there was no conflict between federal law and the state statute — a position backed by the Trump administration, which has made the deportation of illegal migrants a top priority and secured several favorable immigration opinions from the high court in recent months.
“Florida carefully crafted both provisions to precisely track, mimic and depend upon federal immigration law,” Uthmeier wrote, adding that a contrary view “strikes at the heart of states’ ability to protect their citizens from the devastating effects of illegal immigration.”
Florida officials, led by Gov. Ron DeSantis and Uthmeier, have been aggressive in trying to enforce the new law, making more than a dozen arrests of undocumented migrants upon their arrival in Florida even after Williams had issued a temporary restraining order blocking such enforcement of the misdemeanor charge.
In an April 23 letter, Uthmeier informed Florida police agencies “there remains no judicial order that properly restrains you from” making arrests under the state immigration statute. The state attorney general reasoned that Williams’ restraining order only applied to him and other state prosecutors named as defendants in the immigrant groups’ case — not to local, county and state law enforcement agencies.
On April 29, Williams took Uthmeier to task for flouting the restraining order and issued her injunction, then considered whether to hold him in contempt of court. In mid-June, the judge found the attorney general in contempt, instructing him to provide her with biweekly updates on how the state was obeying her order blocking enforcement of the immigration law.
“Litigants cannot change the plain meaning of words as it suits them, especially when conveying a court’s clear and unambiguous order,” Williams wrote in her contempt order last month, citing a passage from Lewis Carroll’s classic, “Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There.”
Responding on social media, Mr. Uthmeier wrote that “if being held in contempt is what it costs to defend the rule of law and stand firmly behind President Trump’s agenda on illegal immigration, so be it.”
At least six other states have similar laws to Florida’s, all enacted in the past two years, as Republican lawmakers have sought to harness the energy President Trump has brought to the immigration issue and to stiffen penalties for undocumented migrants, according to the New York Times. Every court that has considered the laws has ruled against them, according to a Supreme Court brief filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents the challengers.
Those courts relied on Arizona v. United States, a 2012 decision in which the Supreme Court endorsed broad federal power over immigration by a 5-to-3 vote.
