Some excerpts from Judge David Stras's opinion yesterday dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc in Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice v. Bird (see here for the panel opinion):
Access to legal immigration, which allowed my grandparents to settle here following World War II, has been a lasting gift for my family. The welcome mat we offer to those who come here legally, however, means little if skipping the line results in the same (or even better) treatment. Now, as the federal government tries to enforce the nation's immigration laws, Iowa wants to help. If it can do so without getting in the way, I would let it.
[I.] Let's be clear about what happened here. Two people, plus an organization purporting to speak for two others, set out to defend the federal government from Iowa's alleged overreach. The problem, in their view, was that Iowa made it a crime for aliens to set foot in the state if they had ever been "excluded, deported, or removed from the United States." The remedy was what the federal government had already decided to do once before: make them leave the country. In short, it mandated self-deportation.
The parties have diametrically opposed views of what the law does: Iowa sees it as a helping hand; the plaintiffs as encroaching on federal authority. The federal government, for its part, dropped its own parallel challenge in a companion case. And it has given us assurances that, as far as it is concerned, Iowa's efforts actually "further the purposes of federal immigration law."
Despite these developments, the plaintiffs won a preliminary injunction. Not just any injunction, but one that appears to prohibit enforcement of the law against anyone. Fortunately, the panel sent that part back. But we should have reversed the rest too, because the overbroad injunction was far from the only problem with this case….
