PHOENIX (AP) – Voters in Arizona, United States are set to decide whether to let local police arrest migrants suspected of illegally entering the state from Mexico, an authority that would encroach on the federal government’s power over immigration enforcement but would not take effect immediately, if ever.
If Arizona voters approve Proposition 314, the state would become the latest to test the limits of what local authorities can do to curb illegal immigration. Within the past year, Grand Old Party lawmakers in Texas, Iowa and Oklahoma have passed immigration laws. In each case, federal courts have halted the states’ efforts to enforce them.
The only presidential battleground state that borders Mexico, Arizona is no stranger to a bitter divide on the politics of immigration. Since the early 2000s, frustration over federal enforcement of Arizona’s border with Mexico has inspired a movement to draw local police departments, which had traditionally left border duties to the federal government, into immigration enforcement.
The state Legislature approved an immigrant smuggling ban in 2005 that let then-Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio conduct immigration crackdowns, a 2007 prohibition on employers knowingly hiring people in the country illegally, and a landmark 2010 immigration law that required police, while enforcing other laws, to question the legal status of people suspected of being in the country without authorisation.
Arizona voters have been asked to decide matters related to immigration before. They approved a 2004 law denying some government benefits to people in the country illegally and a 2006 law declaring English to be Arizona’s official language. They also rejected a 2008 proposal that would have made business-friendly revisions to the state law barring employers from hiring people who are in the country without authorisation.
