Supreme Court Won’t Let Florida Enforce Law Making Illegal Immigration State Crime

The Supreme Court declined Wednesday to let Florida enforce a state law criminalizing illegal immigration.

The unsigned order included no reasons or noted dissents.

Florida’s law, which was passed in February, makes it a crime to “knowingly enter or attempt to enter” the state after illegally entering the U.S., subject to nine months in prison for the first offense.

The state asked the Supreme Court in June to halt a district court judge’s injunction preventing the law from taking effect.

“Illegal immigration continues to wreak havoc in the State while that law cannot be enforced,” Florida Attorney General James argued in the state’s application. “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.”

Florida’s law was intended to respond to murders committed by an illegal migrant, along with “reports of rampant fentanyl trafficking and other devastating harms killing Florida’s citizens and destroying their communities,” Uthmeier noted in the states’s petition.

Seventeen state attorneys general filed a brief backing Florida, arguing states “retain immigration-related police powers.”