Iowa asks federal court to allow enforcement of its immigration law

(CN) — Iowa should be allowed to enforce its law criminalizing reentry of previously removed or excluded immigrants, the state argued before an Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel in St. Louis Thursday.

The state statute, Senate File 2340, passed in March and signed by Republican Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds in April, makes it illegal under state law for noncitizens to reenter this country after having previously been removed or excluded. Violators could face deportation and up to 10 years in prison.

Iowa solicitor general Eric Wessan told the panel that Iowa’s law was enacted in response to an immigration crisis at the southern border. “Iowa was facing an immigration crisis. Responding to that crisis, Iowa enacted the state crime of illegal reentry,” Wessan said.

Attorney Emma Winger of the Washington-based American Immigration Council, arguing on behalf of an immigrant rights group, said core immigration function of regulating entry and removal is granted to the federal government, which has exclusive control over foreign affairs.

“To permit Iowa, Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, Florida, to enter their own laws regulating entry and removal is obviously unworkable,” Winger told the court. “A 50-state patchwork of different rules and different procedures — that would create pure chaos.”

The Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice, along with two plaintiffs identified as Jane Doe and Elizabeth Roe, and the U.S. Justice Department separately sued Iowa in federal court in May accusing the state of unconstitutionally encroaching on federal authority.

In its suit, the Justice Department claims Iowa’s statute is preempted by federal law and thus violates the supremacy clause of the U. S. Constitution and the dormant foreign commerce clause, which limits the power of the states to regulate the international movement of persons.

U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher temporarily blocked enforcement of the law that was set to go into effect July 1 pending further proceedings of the case. The judge concluded the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their argument that federal immigration law preempts Iowa’s law under the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Seeking to reverse the lower court, the state argues that the concept of field preemption, where federal regulation implicitly precludes state regulation, “imposes the ultimate indignity to a state’s sovereignty.”

Iowa’s statute is a proper exercise of Iowa’s police power and is not preempted under “conflict preemption” — where simultaneous compliance with both federal and state regulations is impossible or when state law poses an obstacle to the accomplishment of federal goals — the state said in its brief.

The Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice argued in its own brief that plaintiffs Doe and Roe were harmed by Iowa’s law because both were previously deported and waited years to return lawfully. Now, they face the risk of prosecution and the prospect of being separated from their families once again. “They would also endure trauma from imprisonment, family separation, and removal to a country where they would face significant hardship,” the plaintiffs wrote.

Iowa’s law was modeled on a Texas state law signed this year by Republican Governor Greg Abbott. The New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in March kept in place a lower court’s injunction barring enforcement of the Texas law while litigation proceeds.

The Eighth Circuit panel hearing Thursday’s arguments consisted of U.S. Circuit Judge Duane Benton, a George W. Bush appointee; U.S. Circuit Judge Jonathan Kobes, a Trump appointee; and Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Morris Arnold, a George H.W. Bush appointee. The court did not say when it would rule.

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