Opponents of Arizona's tough crackdown on illegal immigration filed a lawsuit on Tuesday challenging a United States Supreme Court ruling that will allow police to enforce the so-called show-me-your-papers provision.

 

A coalition of civil rights organizations asked a federal judge in Phoenix to block implementation of the key provision of the Arizona law which requires police to check the immigration status of people they stop, the American Civil Liberties Union said.

 

The immigration status check provision was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in late June.

According to an earlier report of Reuters, the Arizona law, the first of several passed by Republican-led state legislatures to curb illegal immigrants, was signed by Governor Jan Brewer in April 2010 and has a provision requiring police to determine the immigration status of those they detain and suspect are in the country illegally.

Brewer said the law was needed to safeguard Arizonans, whose state borders Mexico. This was the part the Supreme Court upheld on Monday.

Other parts of the Arizona law require immigrants to carry their papers at all times; ban illegal immigrants from soliciting work in public places; and allow police to arrest immigrants without a warrant if an officer believes they have committed a crime that would make them deportable.

The Supreme Court ruled that these provisions went too far in intruding on federal law.

Parts of the Arizona law were blocked by a federal judge before it came into effect. Despite the Supreme Court ruling, a separate case will proceed challenging the Arizona law on grounds that it was unconstitutional and could lead to ethnic and racial profiling of the fast-growing Hispanic population. - Reuters