Southern Poverty Law Center & ACLU Join Forces, File Lawsuit Against Recent Alabama Immigration Law
Leaders from key civil rights organizations gathered on a national telephonic press conference this afternoon to denounce Alabama’s extreme anti-immigrant law as a radical departure from American values and to announce a court challenge. The legislation Governor Bentley signed this morning is notable for its cruelty. It turns Alabama school officials into immigration agents as they are now required by the new law to verify the immigration status of students and report them to the state. It contains the same problematic “reasonable suspicion” provisions as Arizona’s SB 1070. It allows police to arrest and detain a person when there is a “reasonable suspicion” the person is in the country illegally. It forces landlords to verify the immigration status of their tenants and prohibits all people from transporting or “harboring” of any undocumented immigrant. It institutes stiff penalties for anyone, not just the undocumented, who breaks the law. This is of special concern to mixed status families – children could be arrested for transporting their undocumented parents, for example.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Immigration Law Center, and the American Civil Liberties Union announced that they will be challenging the