PHOENIX—A US federal court on Monday upheld the suspension of key parts of a controversial Arizona immigration law which sparked protests last year.
Rights lobbyists welcomed the ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals maintaining a freeze on the most disputed parts of the law, which came into force last July.
“It sends a very clear message, both to Arizona and to other states that might consider doing something like this, that this is an unconstitutional road to go down,” said Omar Jadwat of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
“There were a lot of nails already in the coffin of this approach, but this is should be final blow,” added the ACLU lawyer.
The disputed Arizona law took effect last year stripped of a controversial provision that would have given police officers the power to check the immigration status of suspected criminals.
The provision had been blocked by a federal court that agreed with the US Department of Justice’s argument that immigration issues are the jurisdiction of the US government — not state governments.
Opponents said the law was xenophobic and would lead to people being stopped on the streets simply because of the way they look.
But officials in Arizona, which borders Mexico, have argued the US administration has failed to secure the frontiers and say they are overrun by illegal immigrants.
They maintain that a lucrative people-smuggling trade has triggered a soaring crime rate fed by simultaneous trafficking in drugs and guns.
The row over the Arizona law has thrust the issue of the nation’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants once more into the spotlight, after a series of failed legislative attempts to bring them out of the shadows.
Opinion polls conducted before the law came into force found more than 60 percent of the US population supporting it.
One in three of the 6.6 million people in Arizona is foreign-born and an estimated 460,000 are illegal immigrants, most of whom are Mexican.