The Advocates for Human Rights opposes Arizona's immigration law SB 1070. In April 2010, the Arizona government passed into law new immigration legislation, SB 1070 or the "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act," aimed at identifying, prosecuting, and deporting undocumented immigrants in the state. SB 1070 is one of the broadest efforts yet aimed at enforcing immigration laws at the local level, but as a result of its strict provisions, much of the law threatens core human rights principles. One of the most worrying provisions requires police to demand proof of legal residency when they have "reasonable suspicion" that a person is undocumented. The Advocates for Human Rights warns that these efforts open wide the door to racial profiling and discrimination. This kind of legislation also undermines the public safety of our communities by creating a drastic chilling effect on the ability of crime victims from refugee and immigrant communities to seek the protection of the police.

Arizona-style local enforcement threatens human rights principles. All people, regardless of immigration status, enjoy basic human rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution as well as in international treaties such as the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, which the U.S. has ratified and is legally obligated to uphold. All immigrants, whether documented or not, have a right to due process, equal protection under the law, and freedom from arbitrary arrest, among many others. According to the ACLU of Arizona, here are some of the provisions of the Arizona law, and how they impact the rights of immigrants:

• Right to due process: The law allows police to conduct warrentless arrests of people they suspect of having committed deportable offenses, without any kind of judicial review or even a finding that the individual was likely to escape before a warrent could be obtained.
• Freedom from arbitrary detention: The law allows police to detain people for suspected criminal violations of immigration law. However, many violations of immigration law are civil offenses. If police are not carefully trained, they may detain people unlawfully in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
• Freedom of speech: The law criminalizes solicitation of work by undocumented day laborers, but courts have found this to be protected speech under the First Amendment. 

The law opens doors to racial discrimination. As stated above, the law requires police officers to demand papers proving citizenship or immigration status, “where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States.” This wording in the law is vague and offers no definition of “reasonable suspicion.” The training manual for police officers lists several factors that could contribute to a reasonable suspicion that a person is in the country illegally, including dress, difficulty communicating in English, crowded vehicles, and nervousness. None of those factors are unique to undocumented immigrants, but could easily describe foreign-born legal residents and even U.S. citizens, demonstrating that while claiming to prevent racial discrimination, the law encourages police to rely on ethnic appearance and stereotypes in demanding immigration papers. Immigrants, like all people in the United States, have the right to be free from discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or national origin. Arizona-style immigration legislation, by opening the door to racial profiling and discrimination, violates both the Constitution and U.S. human rights obligations.

The legislation undermines the safety of immigrant communities. All migrants have the right to safety and security regardless of their status. United States laws protect all migrants against violence and intimidation. However, immigrants who are victims of crimes, such as migrant women suffering domestic abuse, often do not report these crimes because they fear that they will be deported, regardless of their actual immigration status. Requiring the police to question anyone suspected of being undocumented will only exacerbate this problem. The law also threatens the right to safety of all people in a community by diverting law enforcement attention away from investigating real threats to public safety. Eroding community trust in the police and diverting scarce resources are two reasons that many police departments are on record as opposing laws like Arizona's SB1070. (Read the press release from the Minneapolis police department here: http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2010/05/twin_cities_top.php).

The law was created and supported by groups who profit from detention of immigrants. The largest private, for-profit prison company in the country was intimately involved with lobbying for the bill. Their motivation was not improving public safety or enforcing immigration laws, but increasing their profits. Read the NPR story on how the prison industry helped write and pass SB 1070. Kris Kobach, the lawyer who helped draft the law, works for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, the legal arm of FAIR, an anti-immigrant group with close ties to white supremacists. The Southern Poverty Law Center identifies Kobach as one of the top 20 anti-immigrant leaders in the country. The Phoenix New Times also examined links between the authors and supporters of SB 1070, major anti-immigrant groups, and white supremacists.