TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Attorney General James Uthmeier’s office late Tuesday quickly appealed after a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against a new Florida law aimed at cracking down on undocumented immigrants who enter the state.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, who early this month approved a temporary restraining order to halt the law, issued a 49-page ruling Tuesday that granted plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction. The ruling also scheduled a hearing next month about whether Uthmeier should be held in contempt or sanctioned after arrests continued following the temporary restraining order.
The attorney general’s office filed a notice of challenging Williams’ ruling at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. As is common, the notice did not detail arguments the state will make at the Atlanta-based appeals court.
The law, passed during a February special legislative session, created state crimes for undocumented immigrants who enter or re-enter Florida. The Republican-controlled Legislature said the law was aimed at helping carry out President Donald Trump’s policies on preventing illegal immigration.
The Florida Immigrant Coalition, the Farmworker Association of Florida and two individual plaintiffs filed the lawsuit on April 2, alleging, in part, that the law violates what is known as the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution because immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility. The lawsuit names as defendants Uthmeier and local state attorneys.
Williams, who held a hearing Tuesday in Miami, agreed with the plaintiffs that the law likely was preempted by federal immigration authority. Among other things, she pointed to the law (SB 4-C) requiring that violators go to jail.
“First, it gives state officials authority to prosecute illegal entry or reentry in cases where federal actors may choose not to,” the judge wrote. “Even if federal and state officials choose to commence parallel dual prosecutions under both laws, SB 4-C’s mandatory detention provision limits federal law enforcement discretion to recommend pre-trial release and obstructs federal courts’ ability to conduct proceedings requiring defendants’ presence. Relatedly, state officials are free to prosecute a charge under SB 4-C even while a federal immigration proceeding is underway, which may determine that the defendant may remain lawfully present under federal law.”
She added that “SB 4-C requires mandatory prison sentences for state law violations where the INA (the federal Immigration and Nationality Act) allows for a fine or probation for the equivalent federal crime.”
“Rather than address any of these conflicts, defendants invoke the general principle that ‘nothing about the ‘overlap’ in federal and state criminal law demands preemption,’” Williams wrote. “It is of course true that any overlap between federal and state laws does not create a per se conflict. But SB 4-C does not just share some overlapping features with federal entry and reentry laws — it creates an entirely separate enforcement scheme for essentially the same conduct regulated by the federal government.”
But in a filing this month, the state tried to draw distinctions with federal authority.
“Through SB 4-C, Florida primarily regulates entry into Florida — not entry into the country,” the state’s lawyers wrote. “Nor does it regulate admission or the discretionary process of removal — it does not determine who is to be admitted or who will be removed from the country, decisions left to the federal government.”
Williams approved the temporary restraining order on April 4. It was slated to last for two weeks but was later extended until Tuesday. The preliminary injunction, unless it is rejected by the appeals court, would block the law as the case continues to play out.
In addition to granting the preliminary injunction, Williams gave Uthmeier until May 12 to “show cause” why he should not be held in contempt or sanctioned for allegedly violating the temporary restraining order. She cited an April 23 letter that Uthmeier sent to law-enforcement agencies “advising them, in part, that ‘no lawful, legitimate order currently impedes (their) agencies from continuing to enforce’ SB 4-C.”
Williams scheduled a May 29 hearing on the contempt or sanctions issue.
Uthmeier has contended that law-enforcement officers are not defendants in the lawsuit and, as a result, aren’t subject to the court’s order. In an April 23 court filing, Uthmeier said “law-enforcement agencies are independent and distinct from prosecutorial agencies under Florida’s constitutional scheme.”
“In Florida, law-enforcement and prosecutorial agencies derive their respective powers from separate constitutional and statutory sections,” Uthmeier’s filing said. “None of those sections grant prosecutorial entities like defendants control over law-enforcement officials. Florida law is typically explicit when it grants one state actor control over another and drapes the latter with the former’s authority.”
But in Tuesday’s ruling, Williams wrote that the “logical outcome of defendants’ argument raises grave constitutional concerns.”
“To posit, as defendants do, that law enforcement may arrest individuals for conduct they know has no current legal basis to sustain criminal charges, is to upend Fourth Amendment jurisprudence in its entirety,” she wrote, referring to the amendment that protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures and generally requires such things as search warrants.
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