US District Judge Sharon Blackburn intervened with Alabama's immigration law just three days before the law was supposed to take effect on the 1st of September (All Headline News). The law, which allows the police to detain traffic offenders if they believe they are illegal immigrants, requires employers to use E-verify to ensure that all of their workers are legal citizens, requires schools to ensure the immigration status of all of their students, and makes it illegal to give a ride or house an illegal immigrant (Johnson). The measure, which was signed on June 9th by Alabama Governor Robert Bentley faced great opposition from the US Justice Department, Hispanics, immigration advocacy organizations, and some churches (All Headline News).
The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Alabama, stating that each state must abide by the federal immigration laws. They argue that the new provisions, which are referred to as H.B. 56, "conflict with federal immigration law and undermine the federal government's careful balance of immigration enforcement priorities and objectives. While the federal government values state assistance and cooperation with respect to immigration enforcement, a state cannot set its own immigration policy, much less pass laws that conflict with federal enforcement of the immigration laws." Furthermore, the Justice Department argued that the new immigration law is completely obtrusive to an immigrant's life, affecting each aspect from employment to housing to transportation to education (Winter). Opponents of the law argue that by requiring schools to check the immigration status of their students, unauthorized immigrants will simply not enroll their children in school (Johnson).
After a nine-hour meeting in federal court in Birmingham, Judge Blackburn heeded these protests, calling an injunction until September 29th "or until the court enters its ruling, whichever comes first.
