section_path: Legal issues/Federal versus state role
section_name: Federal versus state role
paragraph_text: Federal versus state role
  
  The federal government has primary responsibility for immigration enforcement in the United States.
  
  Assistance from state and local police for immigration enforcement has been controversial and legally complicated in various ways. In jurisdictions with majority support for strong immigration enforcement, state and local police often cooperate with federal officials. Some state governments have declared federal enforcement activities insufficient, and attempted to prevent illegal immigration through state law and police. In some jurisdictions where majorities feel federal immigration restrictions are unjust or enforcement actions too harsh, state and local police are prohibited from voluntary cooperation with immigration enforcement agencies. This may include information sharing or acting on ICE detainers. Some jurisdictions prohibit asking about or checking the immigration status of victims, witnesses, or perpetrators, with the goal of encouraging illegal immigrants to report crimes without fear of disproportionate consequences or being deported themselves. Many of these have declared themselves sanctuary cities or states.
  
  States have considerable power to make legal residency status a requirement for employment and state services including social safety net programs and higher education. The 1982 US Supreme Court decision Plyler v. Doe ruled that K-12 students cannot be denied an education on the basis of immigration status. Whether or not to issue driver's licenses for illegal immigrants became a high-profile political issue in the 21st century.
  
  In April 2010, Arizona passed SB 1070, at the time the broadest and strictest anti-illegal immigration bill in the United States. and was challenged by the Department of Justice as encroaching on powers reserved by the United States Constitution to the Federal Government. In July 2010, a federal district court issued a preliminary injunction affecting the most controversial parts of the law, including the section that required police officers to check a person's immigration status after a person had been involved in another act or situation which resulted in police activity. The case came to the Supreme Court of the United States in Arizona v. United States (2012). The Court unanimously sustained the law's central and most controversial requirement, requiring state law enforcement officials "to determine the immigration status of anyone they stop or arrest if they have reason to suspect that the individual might be in the country illegally"—a clause called the "show me your papers" provision by opponents. The Court, however, indicated that future legal challenges to the provision could still be pursued based on, for example, allegations of racial profiling in the use of the clause. The Court also struck down as unconstitutional, by a 5–3 vote, provisions of the Arizona law making it a criminal offense for illegal immigrants to work or seek employment and permitting police to make warrantless arrests if they had probable cause to believe that the arrestee had done an act that would render him or her deportable under federal law"; and struck down as unconstitutional, by a 6–2 vote, a clause of the Arizona law that made it a state crime for immigrants to fail to register with the federal government.
  
  In 2016, Arizona reached a settlement with a number of immigrants rights organizations, including the National Immigration Law Center, overturning the part of the law providing for police to demand papers from persons they suspected of being illegally present in the United States. The practice had led to racial profiling of Latinos and other minorities. The Los Angeles Times reported that the settlement "pulls the last set of teeth from what was once the nation's most fearsome immigration law."
  
  States do have the police power to control movement across their borders and set up border checkpoints, as with weigh stations, California Border Protection Stations, and highway checkpoints set up during the COVID-19 pandemic in Rhode Island. Texas governor Greg Abbott used this power in various ways under Operation Lone Star, targeting illegal entries across the Mexico border. Texas authorities have arrested illegal immigrants on state charges for offenses such as criminal trespass on private land and human smuggling. They began building or enhancing border walls and other physical deterrents, sometimes with negative consequences for migrant safety or the environment, which generated lawsuits. In April 2022, Abbott ordered state authorities to inspect commercial vehicles entering from Mexico (which had already passed US customs inspection) for illegal cargo and passengers. This caused massive traffic backups and had to be abandoned shortly thereafter, without having made any seizures or arrests. A standoff at Eagle Pass began in January 2024 when the governor ordered the Texas National Guard seized control of a park and refused entry to federal border control agents. Abbott and Arizona governor Doug Ducey have arranged for buses to transport migrants released from federal custody to pro-sanctuary cities or even the homes of prominent liberal politicians, without coordinating with local officials and sometimes overwhelming local support services. (At times, federal, state, and private facilities along the southern border have also become overwhelmed.) Florida governor Ron DeSantis even once arranged to airlift of migrants to Martha's Vineyard, a wealthy island in liberal Massachusetts.