Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird spoke at the 2024 Iowa GOP state convention in Clive May 4, 2024. (Photo by Robin Opsahl/Iowa Capital Dispatch)
Attorney General Brenna Bird announced Thursday she has filed an appeal to lift the injunction blocking enforcement on Iowa’s immigration law making “illegal reentry” a state crime.
The appeal comes days after U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher’s ruling siding with the U.S. Department of Justice and a coalition of civil rights groups and preventing the law from being enforced.
The state measure, Senate File 2340, would allow state law enforcement officers to arrest and charge immigrants with an aggravated misdemeanor if they have been previously deported, removed or denied admission from the country.
Judges would be allowed to order a person found guilty to leave the country or face prison time, with law enforcement and state agencies able to transport migrants to U.S. ports of entry to ensure they leave the country. Though the law was set to begin enforcement July 1, the injunction has blocked it from enactment as the lawsuit continues.
That injunction is what Bird’s office seeks to lift, sending the case to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. Following the appeals court decision, the lawsuit could be appealed again, sending it to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Iowa won’t back down” on the law, Bird said in a news release Thursday.
“Today, my office filed an appeal to defend Iowa’s immigration enforcement law that keeps Iowa families safe,” Bird said in a statement. “We can’t afford to stand by any longer as Biden’s border crisis rolls out a welcome mat for drug cartels, human traffickers, and suspected terrorists to invade our home communities. If Biden won’t do his job to secure our borders, Iowa will.”
In his decision, Locher wrote that the Iowa law is “preempted in its entirety by federal law,” agreeing with the DOJ’s argument that immigration law and enforcement is the federal government’s domain.
Iowa Deputy Solicitor General Patrick Valencia argued in court that the state law does not conflict with federal immigration statutes but simply allows state law enforcement and agencies to enforce existing law. However, DOJ officials said that there are differences between the state and federal laws on crimes related to “illegal reentry” — in cases such as when a person has been previously denied entrance to the U.S. but since gained legal citizenship. While the state argued the law should be interpreted as impacting only people in the country illegally, Locher said that there was not language in the law outlining this exception.
The DOJ has also challenged state measures on illegal immigration in Texas and Oklahoma. The Texas law is also under a preliminary injunction and the federal department has filed a lawsuit against the Oklahoma measure.
Bird said on Tuesday that she believes the U.S. Supreme Court could take up an appeal on Iowa’s law, or rule in another case on state enforcement of immigration laws.
“The Supreme Court does not necessarily have to take appeals,” Bird said, according to Iowa’s News Now. “I think there’s a possibility they’ll be dealing with this issue or issues similar to it in the future, because a number of states are having this problem with an out-of-control border.”
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