Attorney General Eric Holder, noting that the Supreme Court ruling today did not give “a license to engage in racial profiling,” warned Arizona law enforcement officials that the Justice Department will “closely monitor” their efforts to check the immigration status of state residents.
“We will closely monitor the impact of S.B. 1070 to ensure compliance with federal immigration law and with applicable civil rights laws, including ensuring that law enforcement agencies and others do not implement the law in a manner that has the purpose or effect of discriminating against the Latino or any other community,” Holder said in a statement on the ruling.
Like Obama, Holder said that he “remain[s] concerned” about the Arizona immigration enforcement law, even though the Supreme Court invalidates three of the law’s provisions.
“I remain concerned about the impact of Section 2, which requires law enforcement officials to verify the immigration status of any person lawfully stopped or detained when they have reason to suspect that the person is here unlawfully.”
The Supreme Court overturned the other sections of the law: “making it a crime under state law for immigrants to fail to register under a federal law, making it a crime for illegal immigrants to work or to try find work, and allowing the police to arrest people without warrants if they have probable cause to believe that they have done things that would make them deportable under federal law,” according to the New York Times.
