The US Department of Justice sued Oklahoma on Tuesday over a state law that seeks to impose criminal penalties on those living in the state illegally.
The lawsuit in federal court in Oklahoma City challenges an Oklahoma law that makes it a state crime – punishable by up to two years in prison – to live in the state without legal immigration status. Similar laws passed in Texas and Iowa are already facing challenges from the justice department. Oklahoma is among several GOP states jockeying to push deeper into immigration enforcement as both Republicans and Democrats seize on the issue. Other bills targeting undocumented immigrants have been passed this year in Florida, Georgia and Tennessee.
The justice department says the Oklahoma law violates the US constitution and is asking the court to declare it invalid and bar the state from enforcing it.
“Oklahoma cannot disregard the US Constitution and settled Supreme Court precedent,” Brian M Boynton, the US principal deputy assistant attorney general and head of the justice department’s civil division, said in a statement. “We have brought this action to ensure that Oklahoma adheres to the Constitution and the framework adopted by Congress for regulation of immigration.” The Oklahoma governor, Kevin Stitt, said the bill was necessary because the Biden administration was failing to secure the nation’s borders.
“Not only that, but they stand in the way of states trying to protect their citizens,” Stitt said in a statement.
The federal action was expected, as the Department of Justice warned Oklahoma officials last week that the agency would sue unless the state agreed not to enforce the new law.
In response, the Oklahoma attorney general, Gentner Drummond, called the justice department’s pre-emption argument “dubious at best” and said that while the federal government had broad authority over immigration, it did not have “exclusive power” on the subject.
“Oklahoma is exercising its concurrent and complementary power as a sovereign state to address an ongoing public crisis within its borders through appropriate legislation,” Drummond wrote in a letter to the justice department. “Put more bluntly, Oklahoma is cleaning up the Biden Administration’s mess through entirely legal means in its own backyard – and will resolutely continue to do so by supplementing federal prohibitions with robust state penalties.”
Texas was allowed to enforce a law similar to Oklahoma’s for only a few confusing hours in March before it was put on hold by a federal appeals court’s three-judge panel. The panel heard arguments from both supporters and opponents in April, and will next issue a decision on the law’s constitutionality.
The justice department filed another lawsuit earlier this month seeking to block an Iowa law that would allow criminal charges to be brought against people who have outstanding deportation orders or who previously have been removed from or denied admission to the US.
The law in Oklahoma has prompted several large protests at the state capitol that included immigrants and their families voicing concern that their loved ones will be racially profiled by police.
“We feel attacked,” said Sam Wargin Grimaldo, who attended a rally last month wearing a shirt that read “Young, Latino and Proud”.
“People are afraid to step out of their houses if legislation like this is proposed and then passed,” he said.