From [JURIST] A coalition of rights groups in Arizona filed an emergency motion on Thursday asking a court to block a controversial provision of Arizona's immigration law [SB 1070, PDF] until an appeal can be heard on the issue. The contested provision requires law enforcement officials to check the immigration status of persons they stop or arrest if there is a reasonable suspicion that the person is in the US illegally. A judge for the US District Court for the District of Arizona last week declined to issue an injunction against the provision , in light of the US Supreme Court ruling in Arizona v. United States [opinion, PDF; JURIST report] which upheld the provision. Among the rights groups involved in the suit are the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF).

Section 2(B) gives police too much discretion when stopping or detaining persons while “checking” their citizenship status. The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and AACJ argued in their brief that Sec. 2(B) cannot be implemented without racially profiling Latinos in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. (That is, police stops and detentions of persons based on physical characteristics orpersons who look Latino to the police are reasonable in Arizona -  any stop and detention of a non-white person). Even lawful detentions and arrests become unconstitutional when the detention becomes prolonged or unreasonable. If officers rely on profiling characteristics such as a person’s ethnicity in determining whether a person should be detained for an immigration check, Sec. 2(B) becomes an unconstitutional “stop-and-identify” law repugnant to all citizens. [MORE]