Hazleton immigrant laws tossed; City to appeal ruling (Wilkes-Barre Times Leader)

By STEVE MOCARSKY and RORY SWEENEY
Staff Writers

SCRANTON – A federal judge on Thursday struck down Hazleton’s illegal immigration ordinances and issued a permanent injunction preventing their enforcement.

U.S. District Judge James Munley concluded in his decision that federal law prohibits Hazleton from enforcing any of the provisions of the ordinances contained in the city’s Illegal Immigration Relief Act.

But the legal battle over the laws that have divided the city for the past year is far from over.

Mayor Lou Barletta called Munley’s decision unfair and vowed to appeal it to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.

“We are discouraged to see a federal judge has decided – wrongly, we believe – that Hazleton and cities like it around the nation cannot enact legislation to protect their citizens, their services and their budgets,” Barletta said at a press conference outside City Hall.

Kris Kobach, one of Hazleton’s lead attorneys in the case, called Munley’s decision “activist” and “one that will not stand up on appeal.”

The decision prevents enforcement of both the Relief Act, which would fine landlords and suspend licenses of businesses found to house or hire illegal immigrants, and a related ordinance that would require anyone who rents a home or apartment in the city to prove citizenship or lawful residency status.

Several Latino groups and individuals, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and several other civil rights groups and immigration attorneys, sued the city last August to have the laws declared unconstitutional.

Barletta proposed the laws in June 2006 after two illegal immigrants were charged in the homicide of a city resident. He had said illegal immigrants were draining the resources of city police and other departments and that something had to be done because the federal government was doing nothing.

“I am very disappointed Judge Munley has ruled against all legal residents of the city of Hazleton. This fight is far from over. I have said it many times before: Hazleton is not going to back down,” Barletta said.

That didn’t sit well with Latino community leaders who oppose the ordinances.

Several Relief Act opponents stopped at Barletta’s press conference to see what he had to say after having their own press conference a few blocks away at the Crystal Barbeque.

Anna Arias, a founder of the Hazleton Area Latino Taskforce, asked Barletta if he has compassion for people in his community “whose taxpayer money you’re using to fight this.”

Barletta shot back that the city shouldn’t be “using taxpayers’ dollars for people who are not paying taxes.”

Arias said illegal immigrants do pay taxes, but Barletta said Arias was confused because only 55 percent of them pay taxes.

“We won, and I’m confused?” Arias retorted.

Arias and a number of other Latino leaders praised Munley’s decision.

“Today, the court recognized that immigration law is a federal matter, and local communities are prohibited from passing these kinds of immigration laws,” said Reagan Cooper, executive director of the Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition.

“The court also recognized the harm that such ordinances can cause in local communities, when immigrants are blamed for a wide range of problems,” Cooper said.

If the ordinances’ goals were to make Hazleton an undesirable destination for illegal immigrants, they were successful, according to Rudy Espinal, president of the Hazleton Hispanic Business Association – a plaintiff in the case.

“A lot of people would just say, ‘Why should I live under these circumstances?’ and just move on,” said Espinal, who was an illegal immigrant for a time before acquiring a green card and eventual citizenship.

He hopes the decision will help the community heal.

“We like the way of life here, how slow-paced life is, and how safe our people feel in this town, and I think that’s probably what we’re all looking for, to just see if we can regain that atmosphere that we had lost through all this process,” he said.

Espinal said he has spoken with several people who left the city because of the ordinance and are now considering returning.

Dr. Agapito Lopez, a cofounder of the Hazleton Area Latino Taskforce, said Munley’s decision came as “a great relief … after a long court battle.”

“This is bringing relief not only to the people of Hazleton. There are about 120 cities that have been waiting to see if they can enact their own immigration laws,” Lopez said.

Anthony Romero, president of the ACLU, said the organization is now considering challenging anti-illegal immigrant laws in several states.

“We will expend all the resources necessary to fight these ordinances all over the country, and we’re confident that we will continue to succeed,” Romero said.

Foster Maer, an attorney with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, praised Munley’s 208-page decision for its “compelling logic.”

“It’s an incredibly well-written decision, very well thought-out, very comprehensive, and just meticulous in its analysis. It’s a first-rate opinion, one of the best I’ve ever seen. And in it, it just takes apart the arguments made by Mayor Barletta and others like him,” Maer said.

Maer said he hopes the decision will “give pause to all the other localities out there, who, frustrated by the lack of action at the federal level, think that they should be able to take over immigration policy. They cannot, and this decision makes that clear,” he said.

But Kobach, who presented much of the legally technical argument in the court case for the city, wasn’t as enamored with Munley’s opinions.

“We knew from the very beginning in this case that we were battling not only the ACLU and anonymous plaintiffs that we could not put on the stand, but to a certain extent that we were also battling a hostile court,” Kobach said.

“From the very beginning, the judge made some decisions that were extremely questionable. One of the most obvious was allowing some of the plaintiffs to proceed anonymously. … No U.S. citizen can walk into court and sue a city anonymously,” he said.

Another decision Kobach found troubling was Munley’s trial order restricting the city’s communication with the federal government “in spite of the fact that in 1996, Congress passed a law that expressly said that no federal official may in any way restrict a city or a state’s communication with the federal government about the legal status of any individual.”

“Those two decisions put us on notice that this was going to be an uphill struggle to get this judge to agree with us. Now that we see the opinion, it’s clear that the judge has bent over backward to find fault with the city’s ordinance and to agree with the vast majority of plaintiffs’ claims,” Kobach said.

“I said earlier that this was an activist decision. I would go so far as to say that this decision is the paradigm of judicial activism because, in several respects, the judge places himself in the shoes of Congress and says this is what I think federal law should mean, not what the plain text of the federal law actually does mean,” Kobach said.