(NewsMax) – Top Republicans Tuesday blasted the Obama administration’s lawsuit against Arizona’s controversial illegal-immigration law as “nothing short of ridiculous.”
Immigration law experts tell Newsmax that the administration has little chance of prevailing against the Arizona statute, which empowers police to arrest illegal aliens once another violation has occurred.
After weeks of speculation, the Department of Justice on Tuesday filed a 22-page lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Arizona.
President Obama has charged the law could contribute to racial profiling. “In the United States of America, no law-abiding person, be they an American citizen, a legal immigrant or a visitor or tourist from Mexico, should ever be subject to suspicion simply because of what they look like,” Obama said when Mexican President Felipe Calderon visited the White House in May.
Apparently unable to substantiate the racial-profiling allegation — the Arizona law doesn’t even take effect until July 29 — the administration instead focused its lawsuit narrowly on the Supremacy Clause in the U.S. Constitution.
The Supremacy Clause says federal laws take precedent over state laws. Article 6, clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution states that laws made “under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.”
Supporters of the Arizona law, however, say it is merely intended to enforce federal laws already on the books.
