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Photo by Jonathan McIntosh
Two New Mexicans have joined a federal lawsuit that seeks to stop Arizona’s tough new immigration law from taking effect in July.
Jesús Cuauhtémoc Villa and Vicki Gaubeca of Las Cruces are among the more than a dozen plaintiffs that challenged the law that empowers Arizona’s police to stop anyone on the reasonable suspicion that they are in the country illegally and that has sparked a national debate.
Both Villa and Gaubeca told The Independent they joined the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Arizona, because they said they travel back and forth between the two states and are concerned about being pulled over by Arizona police officers.
“It’s for myself and for my family — they travel over here too,” said Villa, who is is an anthropology student at Arizona State University in Tempe and returns to New Mexico periodically to see family. He grew up in Albuquerque. “At least I am a student at a university. All they have is a New Mexico driver’s license.”
Under Arizona law, a New Mexico driver’s license wouldn’t prove U.S. citizenship because New Mexico does not require “proof of legal presence” when issuing driver’s licenses, the 98-page complaint reads.
Both Villa and Gaubeca said they are U.S. citizens but fear being taken into custody when the Arizona law takes effect because they don’t carry around citizenship documents when they travel. And they don’t think it’s practical to ask anyone to carry such important documents around all the time, citing how easy they are to lose.
“I have that fear that if they asked me for my driver’s license then I would haven’t proof of citizenship on me. Then they’d ask me where I was born and I’d say Mexico,” said Gaubeca.
Gaubeca, who said she was born and raised in Mexico but is a U.S. citizen through her U.S.-born mother, called it unfair that she should be asked for proof of citizenship and “they wouldn’t ask someone else.”
Villa, meanwhile, called Arizona’s new law “a very impractical bill.”
“I have a friend who is an Irish immigrant who knows several Irish immigrants who have overstayed their visa and they won’t be asked for their papers,” he said. “It can’t really be implemented fairly.”
Arizona’s new law has sparked a national debate on immigration since its passage last month, with groups opposed to it holding protests around the country while supporters elsewhere have tried to pass legislation to mimic Arizona’s tough new law.
In addition to Villa and Gaubeca, the plaintiffs in the federal suit include the American Civil Liberties Union, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and National Association for Advancement of Colored People.
Arizona’s county attorneys and county sheriffs are named as defendants in the complaint.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys said Monday that they were confident that could prove that the new law is unconstitutional on several counts, including its capacity to lead to unreasonable searches and seizures.
For example, even though the new law prohibits racial profiling, police officers would be compelled by the new law to rely too much on race, national origin and language when trying to determine someone’s immigration status under a “reasonable suspicion” standard, the attorneys said.
“Police are put in impossible position,” Nina Perales of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund told reporters on a midday conference call to announce the lawsuit.
Immigration status is a legal status, not something that is visibly apparent, she added.
Arizona’s law enforcement community, while largely supportive, is not of one mind on the new law. A Tucson police officer already has sued in federal court to stop the new law from taking effect and an Arizona sheriff has openly criticized the new law as “stupid” while the current president of the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police opposes it.
Attorneys also said the new law violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause in that the law would lead to people being treated differently because of race and origin.
“This is the most extreme and the most dangerous law dealing with immigration,” Lucas Guttentag, Director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, said.
Added Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP: “It turns citizens into suspects.”
Julie Su of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, which also is part of the suit, described the new law as Arizona’s “own version of the Chinese Exclusion Act,” an 1882 federal law that severely restricted Chinese from entering the country.
