We can add Oklahoma to the list of states facing scrutiny from the Justice Department for forging their own immigration policies that essentially usurp federal authority.
On Tuesday, the Biden administration filed a lawsuit seeking to “preserve its exclusive authority under federal law to regulate the entry, reentry, and presence of noncitizens.” The suit says:
Oklahoma’s House Bill 4156 (HB 4156), like Texas’s preliminarily enjoined Senate Bill 4 and Iowa’s recently enacted Senate File 2340, impermissibly creates a state-specific immigration system that effectively seeks to regulate noncitizens’ entry, reentry, and presence in the United States.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed SB 4 into law in December. Another Republican governor, Iowa’s Kim Reynolds, signed similar legislation, SF 2340, in April. Both laws grant local law enforcement agencies the authority to arrest people believed to be in the U.S. without proper documentation, and allow local judges to deport people who are deemed to be in the country illegally.
The state’s attorney general appears eager for a legal fight.
The state’s attorney general appears eager for a legal fight.
“We fully anticipated that once the bill would be enacted that the Biden administration would arrogantly treat Oklahoma like it’s one size fits all,” AG Gentner Drummond said, per KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City.
As I’ve written previously, a similar law enacted in Arizona more than a decade ago allowed for widespread racial profiling that traumatized communities. That law was largely overturned by the Supreme Court in 2012, but Republicans seem to think the current iteration of the court, with its right-wing supermajority, will hand down a more favorable ruling this time around.