As the Obama administration pushes forward with its suit against Arizona’s new immigration law, Republican senators are trying to shield the Grand Canyon state from the feds.
Jim DeMint of South Carolina and David Vitter of Louisiana introduced an amendment on Wednesday to prohibit federal funding of any lawsuit that aims to invalidate the Arizona law, known as SB 1070.
The legislation is a direct response to the Department of Justice’s suit against the state, which claims that SB 1070 is illegal because it preempts federal authority to police the border.
“States like Arizona shouldn’t be prosecuted for protecting their citizens when the federal government fails to do so,” DeMint said in a statement released to the press. “The federal government is rewarding illegal behavior and encouraging many more to enter our nation illegally when they refuse to enforce our laws. States along the border are facing kidnappings, drug trafficking, human trafficking and gang violence and they have a duty to keep their residents safe. Instead of suing states for doing his job, the president should get serious and stop holding border security hostage to pass amnesty and score points with his liberal base.”
“Poll after poll shows that a significant majority of Americans support increased border enforcement and the Arizona law specifically,” Senator Vitter told The Daily Caller. “Yet the Obama administration has ignored these concerns, and instead of helping Arizona deal with its overwhelming immigration problem, the administration is suing the state. That’s the wrong approach and it shows that stopping illegal immigration is not a priority for this administration.”
The practical result of the DeMint-Vitter amendment would be a prohibition against any action on the part of the Obama administration to participate in lawsuits seeking to prevent Arizona from defending itself against illegal immigration with SB 1070.
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s spokesman, Paul Senseman, in an e-mail to The Daily Caller, wrote that while the governor has yet to read the amendment, “Senator DeMint along with several elected Democrats in Arizona strongly disagree with the poor decision of the Obama administration to utilize federal resources for this lawsuit instead of border security.” He continued, “Arizonans have united in a bipartisan fashion against the federal government’s lawsuit and continued inaction on border security.”
The amendment could be voted on next week in conjunction with the small business bill.