In Arizona dissent, Scalia blasts Obama’s deportation stay, immigration policies

In a stinging, 22-page dissent to Monday's decision striking down most of Arizona's tough anti-illegal immigration law, Justice Antonin Scalia criticized President Barack Obama's announcement earlier this month that he would stay the deportation of young illegal immigrants and suggested that the federal government does not want to enforce its immigration laws.

"The president said at a news conference that the new program is 'the right thing to do' in light of Congress's failure to pass the administra­tion's proposed revision of the Immigration Act," Scalia, a Reagan appointee, wrote in his dissent. "Perhaps it is, though Arizona may not think so. But to say, as the Court does, that Arizona contradicts federal law by enforc­ing applications of the Immigration Act that the President declines to enforce boggles the mind."

The court's decision Monday struck down parts of the law, but preserved one that requires local police to check the immigration status of people stopped for various reasons and whom officers believe are in the country illegally.

There was a catch, however. The court decided that officers cannot detain anyone on an immigration violation. That is, unless federal immigration officials say so.

But here's the catch: If federal agents decline to pick up immigrants, the state doesn't have any way to force federal authorities to pick them up and will likely have to let them go unless they're suspected of committing a crime that would require them to be brought to jail, said Peter Spiro, a Temple University law professor who specializes in immigration law.

So...if local authorities know illegals are being hired by employees, they can do very little.
If they find out a person stopped for speeding is an illegal, they can do nothing.
If they for some reason took illegals to ICE and ICE decided to do nothing about them (as has happened in the past) oh well. Sorry.

I think what infuriates me most about this is when I hear pundits on these tv news shows trying to make the claim that enforcing our immigration policies is all racist. That the local officers are likely to start picking up and jailing people because of the color of their skin.

When did all of our law enforcement officials become racist??? If they were racist, wouldnt black people be the first ones jailed simply because they are black? And its my understanding that law enforcement has bent waaaay over bzckwards to preserve the "rights and dignities" of people of arab descent here since 9-11/ So why all of a sudden should these same officials target people of latin descent simply because they are not white? Especially since a halfway descent lawyer provided by the state can get them off if they really havent committed a crime/

The politicizing of this issue is sickening to me.