We’ve been waiting for a federal judge to issue a ruling so egregious, so inappropriate, and so out of their jurisdiction and authority that the sanctioned party would flatly refuse to follow the order, and it’s finally happened. As left-wing pro-illegal immigrant groups continue to judge shop and engage in lawfare against any effort whatsoever to effect the mass deportation of tens of millions of people who have no legal right to be in the U.S., a state attorney general has finally had enough.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said on Friday he’ll ignore a federal judge’s order that his office direct state law officers to suspend enforcement of a state immigration law the court claims is potentially unconstitutional, Fox News reported exclusively. The law permits misdemeanor charges against undocumented immigrants who enter Florida seeking to evade federal immigration authorities.
“The judge wants me to put my stamp of approval on an order prohibiting all state law enforcement from enforcing Florida’s immigration laws when no law enforcement are party to the lawsuit,” he said, as the ACLU’s suit is being adjudicated before Obama-appointed Miami federal judge Kathleen Williams. “I’m just not going to do that. We believe the court has overstepped and lacks jurisdiction there, and I will not tell law enforcement to stop fulfilling their constitutional duties.”
He has apparently also been threatened with being held in contempt of court, but Uthmeier has brushed that off as well, Fox noted. “I do not believe an AG should be held in contempt for respecting the rule of law and appropriate separation of powers. The ACLU is dead set on obstructing President Donald Trump’s efforts to detain and deport illegals, and we are going to fight back. We will vigorously defend our laws and advance President Trump’s agenda on illegal immigration.”
The lawsuit prompting the injunction claims that Florida’s law violates the Supremacy Clause, which gives priority to federal laws and authorities over state laws. On Wednesday, Uthmeier requested that the court allow FHP to continue enforcing the law, after Williams expressed anger that arrests were still being made while the law awaits appeal in Atlanta’s 11th Circuit. “That law does nothing more than exercise Florida’s inherent sovereign authority to protect its citizens by aiding the enforcement of federal immigration law,” Uthmeier wrote Wednesday.
That situation stemmed from Uthmeier’s April 23 memo to the Florida Highway Patrol, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, sheriffs, and police chiefs, in which he stated that Williams was wrong to claim the order applied to all Florida law enforcement agencies. “I explained that I believed her after-the-fact expansion of her order to nonparties was wrong, and that my office would be arguing as much in short order. Today, my office filed a brief explaining why her order cannot possibly restrain Florida’s law enforcement agencies from enforcing Florida Statutes Sections 811.102 and 811.103. We will continue to argue that position—including on appeal as soon as possible,” Uthmeier wrote in the memo, obtained by Fox News Digital.
Fla. AG James Uthmeier, left and US Marshal Greg Leljedal, right (Office of Florida Attorney General)
This is a true turning point for the Constitution and rule of law. This is bound to fall in the lap of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, herself a former Florida AG. So, what will happen if this federal judge holds the Florida AG in contempt and orders U.S. Marshals to arrest him? Hopefully, President Trump will step in and pull a page out of Barack Obama’s playbook. During Obama’s tenure, states began legalizing marijuana in defiance of a federal ban on recreational use of the drug. When Obama was asked whether he would enforce federal law, he replied that it’s a state issue and said: “We’ve got bigger fish to fry.”