Court Blocks Iowa Law Letting Cops Arrest Migrants

The Des Moines Register reports:

A new Iowa law imposing state criminal penalties on undocumented immigrants is unconstitutional and cannot be enforced, a federal judge ruled Monday.

The “illegal reentry” law, signed by Gov. Kim Reynolds in April, made it a state offenses for people to enter Iowa after being previously deported from or denied entry to the U.S., or failing to depart when ordered. It follows a similar law recently adopted in Texas, both backed by state officials who have been critical of what they perceive to be inadequate federal immigration enforcement by the Biden administration.

Like the earlier Texas law, Iowa’s law now has been blocked in court. The federal government filed suit in May, arguing that immigration enforcement is explicitly a federal responsibility and that Iowa’s law is invalid under the U.S. Constitution.

Read the full article.

US District Court Judge Stephen Locher was recommended by GOP Iowa senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst in early 2022. Months later Biden nominated him to the federal bench. The Senate then approved him in a voice vote.

BREAKING: We just won a temporary block in federal court of Iowa’s SF 2340, a copycat of a Texas’s SB 4 and one of the worst immigration laws ever to be passed in the state of Iowa.

— ACLU of Iowa (@ACLUiowa) June 17, 2024

Federal judge temporarily blocks Iowa law that allows authorities to criminally charge people facing deportationhttps://t.co/ZzWe0LVv0e

— KTIV News Four (@ktivnews) June 17, 2024