Virginia Lawmaker To Introduce Arizona-Esque Immigration Bill

A new battle over the right of states to enforce federal immigration law may soon spring up in Congress’ backyard.

Using Arizona’s controversial immigration law as a model, Prince William County (Va.) Board Chairman Corey Stewart has crafted a proposal to crack down on those who are in the state illegally. Stewart’s bill would allow state and local police to check the immigration status during any lawful stop, detention, or arrest of any person suspected to be an illegal alien. The bill would also place restrictions on hiring illegals, and would ban all policies and ordinances that grant sanctuary status to illegals. Additionally, like Arizona’s SB 1070, the bill contains language that completely forbids law enforcement officials from using racial profiling as a means of targeting suspected illegals.

Yet Stewart’s camp says that unlike the Arizona law, key parts of which were enjoined earlier this week by U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton, their bill would hold up in court.

In her ruling, Bolton said that “requiring police to check the immigration status of those they arrest or whom they stop and suspect are in the country illegally would overwhelm the federal government’s ability to respond, and could mean legal immigrants are wrongly arrested.”

“Judge Bolton enjoined the sections of SB 1070, which created the mirror state code violation for alien registration or traveling without legal documentation, but none of the sections which simply directed [law enforcement officials] to enforce federal law,” an aide to Stewart told me.
 
“Section 3 [of Stewart’s bill] as a whole mirrors the section of SB 1070 which was upheld, not enjoined, and therefore Corey’s version of the model Virginia law puts the direction to enforce federal immigration law in the same section,” he added.

Stewart’s latest foray into immigration policy is certainly not his first. In 2007, Stewart, the highest elected official in Prince William County, a suburb of Washington, D.C. located just 25 miles south of the city, campaigned for and passed a county-wide resolution that allowed local law enforcement officials to check the immigration status of anyone they arrested. The initiative also enrolled the county in the federal government’s 287g program.  Last year, it was reported that violent crime in the county had dropped almost 37%, a statistic Stewart credited in part to the enactment of his policy.

Stewart will push state lawmakers to consider his bill, the Virginia Rule of Law Act, when they convene for a new legislative session in January 2011.