By John Kruzel
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court maintained on Wednesday a judicial block on a Republican-crafted Florida law that makes it a crime for immigrants in the United States illegally to enter the state.
The justices denied a request by state officials to lift an order by Florida-based U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams that barred them from carrying out arrests and prosecutions under the law while a legal challenge plays out in lower courts. Williams ruled that Florida’s law conflicted with the federal government’s authority over immigration policy.
The Supreme Court’s action came in a brief, unsigned order with no noted dissents.
Florida’s Attorney General James Uthmeier, a Republican, and other state officials filed the emergency request on June 17 asking the Supreme Court to halt the judge’s order. Williams found that the Florida law was likely unconstitutional for encroaching on the federal government’s exclusive authority over U.S. immigration policy.
The state’s request to the justices was backed by America First Legal, a conservative group co-founded by Stephen Miller, a senior aide to President Donald Trump and a key architect of the administration’s hardline immigration policies.
Florida’s immigration measure was passed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature and signed into law in February by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis. It made Florida one of at least seven states to pass such laws in recent years, according to court filings.
The American Civil Liberties Union in April filed a class action suit in federal court on behalf of two immigrants in the country illegally who reside in Florida, an immigration advocacy group and the nonprofit group Farmworker Association of Florida, whose members include immigrants in the United States illegally who travel in and out of Florida seasonally to harvest crops.
Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, said the Supreme Court’s denial of Florida’s request “reaffirms a bedrock principle that dates back 150 years: States may not regulate immigration.”
“It is past time for states to get the message,” Wofsy said.
The law imposes mandatory minimum sentences for adult immigrants in the country illegally who are convicted of entering Florida after arriving in the United States without following federal immigration law. Florida officials contend that the state measure complies with – rather than conflicts with – federal law.
Sentences for violations begin at nine months imprisonment for first offenders and reach up to five years for certain immigrants in the country illegally who have felony records and enter Florida after having been deported or ordered by a federal judge to be removed from the United States.
The state law exempts immigrants in the country illegally who were given certain authorization by the federal government to remain in the United States. Florida’s immigration crackdown makes no exceptions, however, for those seeking humanitarian protection or with pending applications for immigration relief, according to the ACLU.
Williams issued a preliminary injunction in April that barred Florida officials from enforcing the measure. The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in June declined to halt the judge’s ruling.
Trump’s administration filed a brief to the 11th Circuit backing Florida in their appeal of the judge’s ruling, arguing that the state measure does not conflict with federal immigration law.
On the same day that Uthmeier filed the state’s Supreme Court request, Williams found him in civil contempt of court for failing to follow her order to direct all state law enforcement officers not to enforce the immigration measure while it remained blocked by the judge.
Williams ordered Uthmeier to provide an update to the court every two weeks on any enforcement of the law.
The tough approach by Florida officials toward immigration mirrors that of Trump. The Republican president joined DeSantis during a July 1 tour of a remote migrant detention center in the Florida Everglades dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.” The complex is estimated to cost $450 million annually and could house some 5,000 people.
(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)
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