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Press Releases

WASHINGTON D.C. –U.S. Senator John Boozman (R-AR) issued the following statement in response to the Supreme Court’s decision on the Arizona immigration law.

“It is unfortunate that we even need a Supreme Court ruling on this law in the first place.  Arizona passed its own immigration law because the federal government refuses to enforce the current law.  In light of that, I was pleased to see the Court recognizes that the state of Arizona, or any state for that matter, has the ability to ascertain if a person is here legally.  That’s just commonsense,” Boozman said.  “The state of Arizona is taking steps to ensure the safety and well-being of its citizens.  States have a right to do that.  If the Obama Administration enforced the rules on the books, however, we wouldn’t need this decision in the first place.  We are a nation of laws.  We can’t pick or chose which ones we are going to enforce.  We have to enforce them all.”

BACKGROUND: The Supreme Court issued its decision today on a constitutional challenge to provisions of Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration law.  The Court found an important provision requiring state law enforcement officers make a “reasonable attempt” to determine the immigration status of a person if “reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien and is unlawfully present” did not conflict with federal law.  It found other provisions of the law—the sections that created misdemeanor offenses for failure to carry an alien registration document and applying for work as well as the section that allowed state law enforcement to make warrantless arrests—to conflict with federal law and therefore be unconstitutional.