Federal Government Sues The People of Arizona

The long threatened suit was finally filed in federal court today by the Department of Justice.

For weeks President Obama and several Administration officials, have hysterically charged that the Arizona law would facilitate or require or permit racial profiling.  Yet profiling is not the grounds for this suit.  Much of the 25 page legal brief is an attempt to sell the court on the notion that federal immigration enforcement is a complex, delicately balanced ballet.  Here’s an example:

The nation’s immigration laws reflect a careful and considered balance of national law enforcement, foreign relations, and humanitarian interests…Because immigration control and management is a field where flexibility and the adaptation of the congressional policy to infinitely variable conditions constitute the essence of the program, Congress vested substantial discretion in the President and the administering federal agencies to adjust the balance of these multiple interests as appropriate – both globally and in individual cases.

According to the suit the state of Arizona would, by identifying illegals and turning them over to federal authorities for deportation, upset a balance “actually established by the federal government” between the various, competing goals.  Anyone who has interacted the U.S.  Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, under the direction of the Department of Homeland Security(DHS),  knows it to be one of the most chaotic, dysfunctional bureaucracies in the world.  The notion that somewhere high level officials consider and “carefully balance” immigration policy is simply absurd.

The Legislators of Arizona passed their new law because the state is suffering a wave of violent crime committed by illegal aliens.  This suit says, in essence, that a vital component of the Obama Administration’s fragile “balance” is weak border enforcement and allowing hundreds of thousands of illegals to continue to live in Arizona.  If Arizona identifies illegals and turns them over to DHS for deportation there will be a lack of “balance.”

This is a weak case and the government is very likely to lose.  However there won’t be a court decision until after the election.  It seems obvious that the purpose of this suit  is to persuade Obama’s hard Left base that he “cares.”