Arizona: The Criminal State

April 23 marks one year since Jan Brewer, the governor of Arizona, signed law SB1070, the first in the country to criminalize immigrants without documentation.

Although the courts stopped the more controversial clauses of the law from coming into effect, including the power to arrest a person suspected of being undocumented, its implementation last July has had a huge impact not only on the state’s economy but also on the daily life of immigrant families who have had to change their routines and habits to avoid being deported. “This becomes hugely mentally exhausting,” maintains sociologist Cecilia Menjivar. It is believed that some 100,000 people have left Arizona as a result of fear. The Phoenix Immigration Center estimates that in 2008, there were 560,000 illegal immigrants in the state of Arizona, as opposed to the 460,00 that could currently be there.

So what does Barack Obama think about all this?

The President thinks that the most pressing problem of SB1070 is not the racist content but its unconstitutional nature.

Obama maintains that Arizona violated the law of the supremacy of the Constitution as it seeks to impose immigration policy in the United States, where it is a federal, not state, matter.

Consequently, it is a “criminal state,” hindering the activities of various federal institutions, particularly the Department of Justice, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security.

The Arizona authorities deny that they have usurped powers. “While control of the border is a federal responsibility, illegal aliens who successfully cross the border and commit crimes in Arizona become Arizona’s responsibility,” affirms the State Attorney General Tom Horne.

For his own part, the governor of Arizona filed a lawsuit against the federal government in February.

As you can see, the racist content of SB1070 is not the most pressing problem. It is who acquires the authority for the design, approval and application of the law.

That is, the White House is more concerned by the risk that this administrative gap brings between state and federal policies as well as how it could extend to other states, leading to grave sociopolitical consequences in the structure of the federal government.

From this perspective, analysts claim that it presents an unprecedented structural crisis of state in the country.

It is a much more worrying situation for the government than for the human rights of immigrants.

Six of the eight civil lawsuits filed against the law have been dismissed, as well as the action taken by the League of United Latin American Citizens, which questioned the legality of its implementation by law enforcement agencies and believe it will promote racial profiling.

As well as this, lawyers from the Department of Justice began an investigation two years ago on anti-immigration sheriff Joe Arpaio, which has not yet yielded results.

In the meantime, Arizona continues to harden its position, including attempts to defy the Constitution by denying immigrants’ children citizenship.

In summary: “What is at stake is no less than the institutional architecture of the country” analysts posit.

But it has slipped through the hands of the government! The passing of SB1070 in Arizona has had a domino effect across the country so that now more than 20 states have copied its precedent.

Meanwhile, mainly Republican legislators in 10 other states (Utah, Oklahoma, Colorado, Ohio, Missouri, Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, Texas and Maryland) have established a common way to create laws similar to SB1070. These multiple legal initiatives against illegal immigrants in the country are responding not only to electoral politics but also financial. This law is likely to send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to jail in a way unlike anything seen before. This could mean profits of hundreds of millions of dollars for private jail firms responsible for imprisoning them, as well as for their “strategic alliances” with local, federal and state authorities.

No wonder the private prison industry, including the Corrections Corporation of America, the biggest private prison business in the country, helped draft and approve the anti-immigration law in Arizona.