Supreme Court hears arguments over Ariz. immigration law

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Supreme Court justices spent more than an hour Wednesday delving into Arizona's immigration law, raising questions about the state's ability to implement federal immigration laws, how much power Arizona has to police its own borders, and how U.S. citizens and legal immigrants could be affected by the law.

Chief Justice John Roberts noted that the government's argument did not focus on ethnic or racial profiling that might arise if SB 1070 goes into effect. He also questioned why the federal government would object to a law that forces police officers to help federal officials find out who is in the country illegally.

Arizona Senate Bill 1070, which passed in 2010, has become a flashpoint for the debate over how to enforce immigration in the U.S. and served as a blueprint for five other states that later adopted similar laws. The law is aimed at driving illegal immigrants out of the state and includes a provision, Section 2(B), that requires police, after stopping, detaining or arresting someone, to determine whether they are in the country legally.

The cramped courtroom was filled for the hearing that lasted more than an hour. Arizona Republican Gov. Jan Brewer and the law's architect, former Arizona state Senate president Russell Pearce, sat near civil rights attorneys who have battled the state over the law for the past two years.

Justice Anton Scalia repeatedly asked why Arizona should be barred from policing its own state.

Meanwhile, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer asked Arizona's attorneys whether regular traffic stops and arrests of legal residents and U.S. citizens could be unnecessarily elongated because of Arizona's new requirements for immigration checks.

Much of the hearing was spent arguing Section 2(B) of the law.

U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli said that part of the law must be ruled unconstitutional because it forces local police to detain and arrest illegal immigrants, and that would interfere with the priorities the federal government has established to seek out and deport illegal immigrants who have committed other, more serious crimes.

Roberts said that the federal government's animosity toward that law leads him to believe that they simply don't want to know who's in the country illegally. Justice Samuel Alito asked how a state legislature could be stopped from telling its employees what to do.

Even Sotomayor told Verrilli at one point to move on to another section of the law since his argument against Section 2(B) "is not selling very well."

Crowds began arriving early Wednesday outside the court building as justices prepared to consider the fate of what many consider the toughest state immigration law in the country.

Dozens of protesters for and against the law rallied at the base of the court steps as police kept watch over the growing crowd.

Opponents of the law chanted "Hey ho, 1070 has got to go!" Members of church groups held a large sign that read "Standing on the side of love."

A smaller group of people supporting the law from the American Council of Immigration Reform held signs proclaiming "Thank you Arizona" and "SB1070 supports federal immigration law, President Obama doesn't."