Florida attorney general asks SCOTUS to allow state immigration enforcement as law is appealed

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier (R) asked the U.S. Supreme Court to allow the state to enforce its immigration law as it is appealed in a lower court.

The state immigration law, SB 4-C, makes it a crime for anyone to enter Florida after arriving in the U.S. illegally and evading immigration authorities, The Hill reported. The Supreme Court last year allowed a similar Texas law to take effect.

“Illegal immigration continues to wreak havoc in the State while that law cannot be enforced,” the Florida attorney general's office wrote in its court filing on Tuesday to Justice Clarence Thomas, the circuit justice for the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“And without this Court’s intervention, Florida and its citizens will remain disabled from combatting the serious harms of illegal immigration for years as this litigation proceeds through the lower courts,” the filing continued.

The lawsuit was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of two anonymous individuals living in Florida illegally, along with the Florida Immigrant Coalition and the Farmworker Association of Florida.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, an Obama appointee, blocked police from enforcing the law indefinitely, agreeing with the plaintiffs that the statute is likely preempted by federal immigration law and unconstitutional.

Florida appealed to the Supreme Court after a three-judge panel on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided to keep the block on the law in place as the state's appeal continues in the courts.