Florida urges SCOTUS to allow migrant arrests in illegal immigration fight

WASHINGTON (CN) — Facing contempt for enforcing a controversial state immigration law against a court order, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier asked the Supreme Court on Monday to free the Sunshine State to implement felony charges against certain immigrants.

A federal judge held Uthmeier in contempt last week for continuing to arrest certain immigrants who entered Florida despite a court order barring such actions. Uthmeier sent a memo to police officers stating that he could not stop them from making such arrests.

Uthmeier pushed the justices to let Florida enforce Senate Bill 4-C, which empowers state law enforcement officers to arrest people based on how they entered the country, authority typically reserved for the federal government.

“Illegal immigration continues to wreak havoc in the state while that law cannot be enforced,” Uthmeier wrote. “And without this court’s intervention, Florida and its citizens will remain disabled from combating the serious harms of illegal immigration for years as this litigation proceeds through the lower courts.”

In February, Florida’s Republican-led Legislature passed Senate Bill 4-C, creating two new criminal statutes aligned with federal immigration law. One bars unauthorized migrants from knowingly entering Florida after crossing into the U.S. illegally; the other criminalizes their presence if federal removal proceedings are already underway.

The ACLU of Florida challenged the state law on behalf of the Farmworker Association of Florida, the Florida Immigrant Coalition and Florida residents with pending federal immigration applications.

Florida’s SB 4C is not only unconstitutional, but it is also cruel and dangerous, Bacardi Jackson, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, said when the lawsuit was filed.

“This law strips power from the federal government and hands it to state officers with no immigration training or authority, threatening to tear families apart and detain people who have every legal right to be here,” Jackson said. “Our communities deserve safety, dignity, and due process — not politically motivated attacks.”

A Florida court found the law violated the dormant commerce clause and was preempted by federal immigration law. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams issued a restraining order blocking enforcement and directing Uthmeier to notify local law enforcement of her decree. After reports of continued arrests, the judge extended the order.

Uthmeier initially complied, notifying state agencies of the judge’s order. But five days later, he sent a letter to police agencies across the state, telling them “there remains no judicial order that properly restrains you from doing so,” according to court documents.

Uthmeier argued that only state individuals listed in the lawsuit were bound by the order. Williams rejected that argument, holding Uthmeier in contempt.

At the Supreme Court, Florida argued that the lower court’s approach would hold the attorney general liable for the actions of those whom they don’t control.

“That would open the door to a harrowing possibility: elected officials of a sovereign state, acting in full accordance with court orders, could be made criminals ‘against [their] consent, and by the mere rashness or precipitancy or overheated zeal of another.” Uthmeier wrote.

Uthmeier said enforcing SB 4-C will decrease illegal border crossings and associated harms like drug and human trafficking.

“If a State’s police powers are powers at all, they allow a State to criminalize harms destructive to the community,” Uthmeier wrote. ‘That is why States routinely regulated the movement of illegal aliens before, during, and after the Founding.”

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