Washington — Florida officials asked the Supreme Court on Monday to allow the state to enforce a new immigration law that makes it a crime for people in the United States unlawfully to enter Florida.
In an emergency appeal to the high court, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier asked the justices to put on hold a federal judge’s decision preventing law enforcement officers from enforcing the new law, known as SB 4-C. The judge, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, ruled that the measure is likely unconstitutional.
A federal appeals court in Atlanta declined to halt Williams’ order and is allowing the law to take effect while legal proceedings continue.
“Florida is enjoined from enforcing its statute to the detriment of Florida’s citizens and the state’s sovereign prerogative to protect them from harm,” Uthmeier wrote in his request for emergency relief from the Supreme Court. “Illegal immigration continues to wreak havoc in the state while that law cannot be enforced. And without this court’s intervention, Florida and its citizens will remain disabled from combatting the serious harms of illegal immigration for years as this litigation proceeds through the lower courts.”
Williams had initially issued a temporary restraining order that prohibited enforcement of the immigration law and ordered the attorney general to notify all law enforcement agencies in the state of her injunction. Uthmeier circulated a letter to those agencies in April informing them that officers and agents should comply with Williams’ directives. But in a follow-up letter, the attorney general told the law enforcement community that “no judicial order … properly restrains you from” enforcing the law, and that “no lawful, legitimate order currently impedes your agencies from continuing to enforce” it.
In response to the letters, Williams found Uthmeier in civil contempt earlier this month.
“Litigants cannot change the plain meaning of words as it suits them, especially when conveying a court’s clear and unambiguous order,” she wrote. “Fidelity to the rule of law can have no other meaning.”
The judge ordered Uthmeier to file biweekly reports about whether any arrests, detentions or other law enforcement actions were made under Florida’s law.
The state’s immigration law was passed earlier this year and makes it a crime for people living in the U.S. illegally to “knowingly enter or re-enter Florida after coming into the country by “eluding or avoiding examination or inspection by immigration officers.” State officials have said the measure aims to help the Trump administration curb illegal immigration and tracks federal immigration law.
Two migrants who are living unlawfully in Florida, the Florida Immigrant Coalition and the Farmworker Association of Florida sued the attorney general and 20 state attorneys over the law, arguing that it is preempted by federal law and a violation of the Constitution.
Uthmeier defended the law in filings with the Supreme Court, writing that state lawmakers approved the measure in response to “devastating harms killing Florida’s citizens and destroying their communities.” He said the law was a “measured effort” by the state to protect its sovereignty and falls within Florida’s law enforcement responsibilities.
