Click here to read Judge Susan Bolton’s injunction.

PHOENIX — U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton today blocked the most controversial parts of Arizona’s new immigration law, which goes into effect tomorrow. The judge blocked the provisions that required officers to check a person’s immigration status while enforcing other laws; that required immigrants to carry their papers at all times; and made it illegal for undocumented workers to solicit employment in public places. These provisions will be put on hold until they are resolved in court.

In her ruling, Judge Bolton ruled, “There is a substantial likelihood that officers will wrongfully arrest legal resident aliens under the new (law).”

“By enforcing this statute,” she said, “Arizona would impose a ‘distinct, unusual and extraordinary’ burden on legal resident aliens that only the federal government has the authority to impose.”

The law will go into effect tomorrow, but without its most controversial provisions.

SB 1070, was signed into law by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer in April. It has been challenged in various lawsuits brought be police officers, the ACLU and other civil rights groups, and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Critics contend that it the law is unconstitutional because they say it usurps the federal government’s role in enforcing immigration law. They also contend that the law will increase the incidence of racial profiling by police.

New America Media, News Report, Annette Fuentes

TUCSON, Ariz.–Dressed in blue graduation caps and gowns, four students were arrested Monday evening at Sen. John McCain’s office as they called for passage of legislation to assist immigrant students wanting to attend U.S. colleges.

Tucson police arrested and booked the youth on trespassing charges and took them to the Pima County Jail. Federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) placed a detention order on three who are undocumented immigrants.

“We’re putting ourselves on the line, for people we really believe in,” said Mohammad Abdollahi, 24, an undocumented immigrant from Iran, who was arrested. He lives in Ann Arbor, Mo., and is the co-founder of DreamActivists.Org.

“This is not about us,” he said. “This is about the hundreds of thousands of young people who have the same dream, and we want to provide them with the same opportunity.”

The protestors were calling on McCain to support the Dream Act, a bill that would allow youth who enter the country illegally before age 16 to legalize their status by continuing to pursue higher education or enrolling in the military.

Abdollahi said his education was interrupted due to his immigration status. He cannot return to Iran, he said, because he is gay and there homosexuality is punishable by death. Before his arrest, he said he would be willing to stay in a detention center for as long as takes for the Dream Act to pass.

The students’ action was the latest act of civil disobedience nationally and among the first in Arizona lead by undocumented immigrant youth, coming as a national coalition headed by Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) announced similar actions across the nation.

“They are elevating the reality that at the end of the day, they have to expose to the nation what’s happening to them, and it might just mean that they would be deported,” said Angelica Salas, director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA). Salas called the student’s actions “inspirational” and said “that really compels us and the nation to act urgently because the need is great.”

The students targeted McCain, a former Dream Act supporter, to ask him to sponsor it in Congress. Flavia de la Fuente, a spokesperson for the group, said they were considering meeting with McCain after his staff expressed his interest.

“It is their right to peacefully protest,” said McCain spokesperson Brooke Buchanan in a prepared statement. “Sen. McCain understands the students’ frustrations, but elections have consequences and they should focus their efforts on the president and the Democrats that control the agenda in Congress,”

McCain, who is running for re-election, previously pushed for comprehensive immigration reform. But with J.D. Hayworth, a hardliner calling for border militarization, as his primary opponent, McCain has now called for border security without legalization.

The day of the protest, McCain issued a press release calling on Pres. Barack Obama to deploy the National Guard to the southern border.

“We feel he’s playing politics with the lives of our communities. For the purpose of being a politician, he’s taking an anti-immigrant stance when we know that in the past he has supported undocumented youth,” said Lizbeth Mateo, 25, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico. She is an organizer with DREAM Team Los Angeles, Calif., who was also arrested.

All students are activists who have been involved with coalitions in Illinois, Michigan, Arizona and California. With their action they hope to inspire other undocumented students to come out of the shadows and mobilize for the Dream Act, getting involved in similar acts of civil disobedience if necessary.

“We worked, we lobbied, we faxed, we emailed, we’ve staged rallies, we’ve done interviews. We‘ve done everything and we reached the point were we can’t give anything else of ourselves,” said Yahaira Carrillo, 25, another undocumented Mexican student from Kansas, Mo., who was among the arrested. “It’s not about us anymore. It’s about the bigger movement and the community and the young people that are coming to us every day telling us that their homes are dashed, that their dreams are broken and that they don’t know how to go on.”

It is estimated that about 65,000 students graduate from high school every year and cannot pursue higher education because of their immigration status.

Protestors chose Arizona as the site of their action because of recent state laws that target undocumented immigrants and eliminate ethnic studies. 

“In Arizona we’re seeing an increase in attacks, and we’re escalating our tactics,” said Raul Alcaraz, 26, a U.S. citizen and Arizonan who was arrested. “We are tired of injustice.”

The arrestees are due in court June 16 on the misdemeanor trespassing charges. When they are resolved, they would be turned over to ICE. All of them have legal representation.

“We were prepared for this,” said de la Fuente. “It’s unfortunate that our immigration system feels that they don’t belong in this country and should be treated as criminals.”

New America Media, Commentary, Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez,

TUCSON HIGH SCHOOL: As I prepare to speak to an innovative class here about indigenous philosophies, the students begin their class in the following manner:

In Lak Ech – Tu eres mi otro yo – You are my other self. I am you and you are me. If I hurt you, I hurt myself. If I hate you, I hate myself. If I love and respect you, I love and respect myself.

Students here, part of the Tucson Unified School District’s highly successful Mexican American Studies (MAS) K-12 program, the largest in the nation, are taught this and other indigenous concepts, including how to measure time by the Aztec and Mayan calendars. Not coincidentally, academically, MAS students -– many of whom were doing poorly prior to entering this program -– consistently outperform their peers. It is virtually a college-bound factory.

But in the state capital, Phoenix: Arizona’s state superintendent of schools Tom Horne has just engineered the passage of a new draconian state law, HB 2281, that would eliminate all funding for ethnic studies programs.

Five hundred and eighteen years after Columbus initiated the theft of a continent, Horne, the state’s would-be governor, is using the passage of HB 2281, to perpetuate the notion that indigenous peoples and indigenous knowledge remain outside of western civilization.

This is the same state that recently passed the racial profiling SB 1070 law; the primary targets would be Mexicans and Central Americans with indigenous features, suspected of being “illegal aliens.”


Despite the success of the MAS program, Horne has long expressed the view that the only things that should be taught in Arizona schools are lessons that originate in western or Greco-Roman civilization. While his bill affects the whole state, his primary target has long been Tucson’s program.

Through the bill, Horne mischaracterizes the program by claiming that its teachers preach hate, segregation, anti-Americanism and the violent overthrow of the government. The bill sets up an inquisitorial mechanism that will monitor books and curricula. Horne has been especially critical of Rudy Acuña’s “Occupied America: A History of Chicanos” and Paolo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.”

This is not the only effort to punish indigenous peoples in Arizona’s educational system. Separately, the Arizona Department of Education has banned teachers with heavy accents from teaching English classes.

Welcome to Apartheid Arizona.

Tucson federal courthouse: Like clockwork, at 1:30 p.m., 70 short, brown men (and sometimes a few women) occupy the left side of the courtroom, shackled at the ankles, the waist, and the wrists. Within one hour, they are charged, tried and convicted en masse of being illegally present in the United States. After being dehumanized, they are then paraded out of the courtroom. Most have either served or are sentenced to the private detention facility, operated by the Correctional Corporation of America (CCA). This drama unfolds every day here except Saturday and Sunday, every week of the year.

Welcome to Operation Streamline. Its goal is to criminalize every migrant that steps into this kangaroo court, while enriching CCA to the tune of $15 million per month.

Southside Tucson: Several days before the state legislature passes SB 1070, a massive raid involving 800 military-clad U.S. federal agents swoops into this primarily Mexican-indigenous community, occupying and terrorizing its residents, all for the purpose of arresting 48 suspects in a human smuggling operation.

Maricopa County: While Sheriff Joe Arpaio denies a racial motivation, over the weekend, he showcases his 15th major “crime sweep” since early 2008 in Phoenix. The sweeps -– which target Mexican-indigenous communities -– may have actually backfired. They provide a glimpse to the world of how the entire state and nation could look like if SB 1070 is affirmed. To conduct these sweeps, Arpaio utilizes the state’s anti-human smuggling law, accusing migrants of being accomplices in their own smuggling. Such a use of the law smacks of official kidnapping and terror.

While there were undoubtedly many Arpaios in South Africa during the apartheid era, there were no Operation Streamlines there. Kangaroo courts yes, but not daily one-hour mass-show trials.

The Arizona-Mexico border: In the realm of violence, Arizona is no South Africa, but we do have our own killing fields. For the past dozen years, some 5,000 migrants have been found dead in the inhospitable desert; medical reports confirm that many have died due to violence, including blunt trauma to the head. That many thousands of migrants are funneled through the desert annually has long been official policy of U.S. immigration officials. Under international law, at best, this could be construed as negligent homicide.

Washington, D.C.: Ironically, in response to these draconian laws and measures, even Democrats have been cowed into pushing for more apartheid measures –walls, more agents and the further militarization of the border — as a solution.

Just solutions for the problems listed here require calling for international agreements that place human beings at the center, without losing their citizenship, culture, rights or their humanity.

Rodriguez, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona, can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com

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