Skip to content

Judicial Watch, Inc. is a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, which promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law.

Judicial Watch, Inc. is a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, which promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law.

Because no one
is above the law!

Donate

Corruption Chronicles

Immigration Court Battles Begin

Fed up with the enormous burden of illegal immigration, cities nationwide have created legislation in an effort to curb it and now they face costly litigation battles with so-called civil rights groups that are challenging the new laws in court.

Five municipalities have already passed ordinances to control illegal immigration and penalize those who abet it and dozens are in the process of creating such legislation. Many of the proposed laws are based on those created over the summer in Hazelton Pennsylvania, a former coal-mining town northwest of Philadelphia with a large illegal immigrant population.

Hazelton’s Illegal Immigration Relief Act was designed by Mayor Louis Barletta after an illegal immigrant committed a brutal murder in May. Agreeing with the mayor’s sentiment that illegal immigrants were destroying the city, Hazelton’s City Council approved the law in July. It suspends the license of any business that employs, retains or aids illegal immigrants and imposes a hefty fine on landlords renting property to illegal immigrants. It also declares that all official city business be written in English.

Now various civil rights groups are suing Hazelton as well as Riverside California, seeking to block their laws by claiming that they violate the United States Constitution’s supremacy clause by attempting to regulate immigration, which is up to the federal government.

Leading the lawsuit bandwagon is the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund and, of course, the American Civil Liberties Union which one well-known conservative journalist suggests should change its name to the EBLACLU for Everyone But Legal Americans Civil Liberties Union.

They claim that the ordinances discriminate against immigrants and the president of one of the group’s actually said that the were created as “a reaction to a crazy climate of get these people out of town.”

The argument that the local laws are unconstitutional may not hold up in court since a congressional report recently concluded that cities are entitled to use local licensing laws to regulate the employment of illegal immigrants, especially since the measures are consistent with federal objectives.

Regardless of who wins the legal battle, cities throughout the country, already burdened with the toll that illegal immigrants have taken on law enforcement, healthcare and education must spend lots of taxpayer dollars to defend the laws they were forced to create to compensate for the federal government’s shortfall.


Related

VP’s Failed Initiative to Curb Irregular Migration Gets Another $170 Mil as Numbers Surge

Corruption Chronicles | March 28, 2024
As enormous amounts of U.S. taxpayer dollars pour into Central America under Vice President Kamala Harris’s ill-fated initiative to curb illegal immigration, the Biden administrati...

Judicial Watch: Federal Appeals Court Hearing in Lawsuit Challenging Illinois Counting Ballots up to…

Press Releases | March 27, 2024
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that an appellate oral argument is set for Thursday, March 28 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in the case fil...

Judicial Watch Sues to Get 911 Call, Arrest Report of Laken Riley’s Murder

In The News | March 27, 2024
From Breitbart: Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton announced a Georgia Open Records Act lawsuit against the University of Georgia (UGA) Police Department to get the 911 call made ...