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Federal Judge Strikes Down Part of Ga. Immigration Law

March 21st, 2013

An order issued by a federal judge Wednesday permanently blocks a portion of a 2011 Georgia immigration law.

Judge Thomas Thrash’s order does away with a portion of the law that would have made it a crime to knowingly harbor or transport an illegal immigrant during the commission of crime. Thrash eliminated that section because he says it’s pre-empted by federal law. Omar Jadwat is an attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrant Rights Project. Jadwat says without the provision, much of the heart of the law no longer exists.

“So one of the things the state said is that under this law a U.S. citizen child, the teenager, driving his undocumented mother to the grocery store would be a criminal subject to prosecution by the state, so we’re very pleased that this section, which has never gone into effect because of the challenge we filed is now permanently struck down.”

But state Representative Matt Ramsey who authored the immigration law says the order was not a surprise based on the U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding a similar law in Arizona. He says striking down the provision does not deal a major blow to the law.

“It was a very, very, very small part of our bill and we continue to be elated with how our bill has stood up to its scrutiny of legal challenges over, over and over again. The most critical parts of the bill have been upheld by the court, and we continue to be satisfied by how the courts treated our legislation.”

Ramsey says he does not plan to rework the bill in light of the ruling.

The portion of the law which allows law enforcement officers to check the immigration status of criminal suspects who fail to produce proper identification still stands.