By Clifford M. Marks | Wall Street Journal
June 18, 2010
Time to check in again on everybody’s favorite Arizona immigration controversy. Today, we have two updates for the price of one. (Feel free to hit refresh and give us another pageview to even the score.)
First, from Quito, Ecuador, of all places, a local TV station’s interview with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yielded this news: the Justice Department, she said, “will be bringing a lawsuit” against the recently passed Arizona law, which makes it a crime to be in the U.S. illegally and empowers state law enforcement officials to stop people they suspect of breaking the law.
Last month, we reported that DOJ was “likely” to sue, but Clinton went further.
“President Obama has spoken out against the law, because he thinks that the federal government should be determining immigration policy,” she told Ecuador’s NTN24. The interview was conducted on June 8, but surfaced yesterday.
The Justice Department has declined to confirm its plan to sue, according to this report today from the Washington Post.
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer was none too pleased with Clinton’s South American tidings. “If our government intends to sue our state to prevent illegal immigration enforcement, the least it can do in inform us before it informs the citizens of another nation,” she said yesterday in a statement.
The other Arizona immigration news? Whatever happens between lawyers and judges, it seems the law at least has considerable support in the court of public opinion, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released yesterday. The survey reports that 58 percent of Americans support the Arizona measure, and 42 percent do so strongly, while 41 percent oppose the law.
But there’s still more immigration news to report. Citizens of Fremont, Nebraska, a town of 25,000, are due to vote Monday on a city ordinance that would prohibit harboring, hiring or renting to undocumented immigrants. Here are detailed reports today about the ordinance from WSJ and NYT.
The ACLU has threatened to sue if the ordinance passes, WSJ reports.
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