Arizona Attorney General’s Office Asks Ninth Circuit To Stop DHS Immigration Policy

Arizona Attorney General’s Office Asks Ninth Circuit To Stop DHS Immigration Policy

by | Jul 27, 2021 | News

PHOENIX, AZ – The Arizona Attorney General Office is asking the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to grant an emergency injunction pending appeal, requiring federal agencies to return to “normal removal operations” and follow existing federal immigration law and resume deportations.

Arizona and Montana are suing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and federal officials over the February 18, 2021 Interim Guidance that halts nearly all deportations and ICE arrests. After the Interim Guidance was issued, deportations outside of the “priority categories” dropped by 98 percent in Arizona (only 7 out of 325 “other priority” cases were deported). Additionally, immigration-related arrests have dramatically decreased. ICE officers average just one interior arrest every 2.5 months.

The Arizona Attorney General Office claims that the Interim Guidance is in direct violation of federal law for removals of aliens with final orders of removal. 8 U.S.C. § 1231(a)(1)(A), requires that ICE “shall” remove an alien, who has received a final deportation order, from the United States within 90 days unless another exception in § 1231 applies. Late last month, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in a separate case (Johnson v. Guzman Chavez) that “shall” means “must,” i.e. it is mandatory language.

Monday’s filing comes as June numbers show the border crisis is only getting worse. More than 188,000 individuals were encountered along the southwest border in June 2021. DHS has not publicly released removal numbers for several weeks.

Arizona Joins Coalition To Defend Second Amendment Before Ninth Circuit

Arizona Joins Coalition To Defend Second Amendment Before Ninth Circuit

by | Apr 4, 2021 | News

Arizona has joined a coalition of 22 states before the Ninth Circuit defending the Second Amendment rights of American citizens. The states are asking the court to declare California’s law limiting magazine capacities as unconstitutional.

Arizona, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming are filing a legal brief at the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Duncan v. Rodriquez – a challenge of California’s unconstitutional ban on extremely common magazines for firearms.

In the amicus brief, the states’ attorneys general note that California Penal Code 32310 violates the Second Amendment: “This Court, therefore, should not apply a balancing approach – like strict scrutiny or intermediate scrutiny – to a ban on arms commonly used by law abiding citizens for lawful purposes. Such an approach would be inconsistent with the decisions of the Supreme Court in Heller, McDonald, and Caetano.”

“The enumerated right to bear arms reflected in the Second Amendment is fundamental and predates the Bill of Rights. The right is important to millions of Americans, including many of our most vulnerable citizens living in disadvantaged communities. The arms at issue in these proceedings are commonly used by millions of law-abiding citizens for a myriad of lawful purposes,” added the attorneys general.