Defenders of Arizona’s immigration law, have repeatedly claimed that SB-1070 simply mirrors federal law. The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) legal challenge against the law is based on argument that SB-1070 is federally preempted and interferes with the federal government’s enforcement of immigration laws. If SB-1070 were really a “mirror image” of federal law, the DOJ wouldn’t have a very a strong case. However, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox (R), who filed a brief in support of SB-1070 along with eight other states, admitted today on Fox News that the Arizona law is not identical to federal law:

Right now, in every single state, state police officers can exercise their discretion if they have reasonable suspicion that someone they stop is an illegal and check with the feds. What Arizona said, instead of leaving that up to the individual cop, we’re gonna make it our state policy that whenever there’s reasonable suspicion, we’re gonna give it to the feds. There really hasn’t been that big of change in the laws. The Obama administration is a little “miffed” that Arizona is forcing it to enforce immigration law.

Watch Cox and those who claim SB-1070 “mirrors” federal law:

However, what Cox dismisses as not “that big of a change” is actually a huge deal with potentially devastating effects. Before deciding to file the lawsuit, Attorney General Holder met with nine police chiefs who expressed concerns about what the difference between mandating local enforcement of immigration laws and allowing police to use “discretion” implies for the safety of their communities. “This law is the culmination of a very broken immigration system,” Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris said. “It doesn’t fix the immigration problem, it only diverts our scarce resources.” Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck added, “This bill breaks the trust with our communities.”

Not only does SB-1070 require police to ask about immigration status, it also allows Arizona residents to sue law enforcement officials if they believe the law is not being enforced. Additionally, SB-1070 criminalizes several aspects of immigration that are only considered civil violations under federal law and in some cases aren’t even illegal — such as the transport of an undocumented immigrant and the solicitation of work in a public space (day labor). Finally the explicitly stated purpose of SB-1070 is to make “attrition through enforcement” the law. In other words, the law is crafted to make life in Arizona unbearable — if not impossible — so that they self-deport. The federal government meanwhile prioritizes removing dangerous undocumented immigrants. In its brief, the DOJ explains that the “federal government will be required to divert resources from its own, carefully considered enforcement priorities – dangerous aliens who pose a threat to national security and public safety – to address the work that Arizona will now create for it.”

The Washington Institute for near East Policy has a new report, Fighting the Ideological Battle: The Missing Link in U.S. Strategy to Counter Violent Extremism, that looks at the need to commit more resources to counter violent Islamic ideologies. While recognizing that the Obama administration has done some good work repairing America’s image by rejecting the Bush administration’s “global war on terror” rhetoric, the report argues — convincingly, in my view — that it’s a mistake for the Obama administration to simply avoid mentioning the role of Islamic faith when discussing violent extremism.

It’s also worth noting a shift from the administration on this. Speaking Tuesday about the recent Uganda terrorist attacks, President Obama acknowledged that a radical version of Islam views as anti-Islamic “any efforts to modernize, any efforts to provide basic human rights, any efforts to democratize.”

The WINEP report’s arguments about what the administration can to highlight and isolate offensive Islamic ideologies are seriously undermined, however, by one of its very first “core recommendations”:

Ensure that Islamism — a radical political ideology separate from Islam as a religion — is recognized internally within the U.S. government as the key ideological driver of the violent extremist threat posed by al-Qaeda and other radical Islamist groups. Meanwhile, U.S. public diplomacy efforts should sharpen the distinction between the Muslim faith and the violent political ideology of Islamism.

This is a pretty astonishingly reductive rendering of Islamism, one that seriously undermines the rest of the report. For example, one of its own “strategic recommendations”:

Build upon defections and disillusionment among ranks of radical extremists, including former al-Qaeda members and other ex-jihadists such as “Dr. Fadl,” an Egyptian ideologue who broke with al-Qaeda after years of justifying the group’s radical ideology and tactics.

Good idea. Problem is, Dr. Fadl and many other ex-jihadists who’ve since renounced terrorism still consider themselves Islamists. Despite having moderated their views on the uses of violence, they still believe that Islam is not just religious faith and practice but a complete political system. Some on the right, like Frank Gaffney and Daniel Pipes, deem the conservative practice and political application of Islam to be a threat in itself. But casting “Islamism” writ large as inherently violent and irretrievably hostile to the West deprives us of a potentially valuable tool for doing exactly what the report recommends — building upon defections and disillusionment among ranks of current and former radical extremists, and isolating and dividing violent Islamists from non-violent Islamists. This is a key distinction that has yet to be embraced by the Obama administration, though the Cairo speech nodded in that direction.

Proponents of Arizona’s new immigration law, SB-1070, have a new talking point: they are now arguing that if the Department of Justice (DOJ) is going to legally challenge SB-1070, it should also go after “sanctuary city” policies as well. “Sanctuary city” is a right-wing derisive term used to describe cities that have adopted community policing policies that prevent police from asking about the immigration status of or detaining and arresting immigrants solely for being undocumented. On Fox News today, the architect of SB-1070, lawyer Kris Kobach, argued that “sanctuary cities” are “expressly forbidden” by Congress and that laws like SB-1070 are encouraged:

Sanctuary cities are expressly forbidden by Congress. [...] In contrast, what Arizona is doing is not prohibited by any specific statute. And indeed, it is invited by several statutes that recognize that a state can and should help the federal government make immigration arrests. So, it’s as if the attorneys and the Justice Department are completely ignoring what Congress said in 1996 when they passed that law prohibiting Sanctuary Cities. [...] This Obama administration Justice Department is saying, “We’re not so concerned about Sanctuary Cities. We’re going to ignore that portion of federal law and we’re gonna sue Arizona instead.” It is outrageous.

Watch it:

However, while Kobach accuses the DOJ of “completely ignoring” the laws, it appears Kobach is either overlooking or unfamiliar with “sanctuary city” policies and their relation to the 1996 law. The intent of “sanctuary city” laws are to encourage cooperation between local police and the immigrant community. If undocumented immigrants believe that police will detain and deport them solely for being in the U.S. illegally, they are less likely to report crimes and serve as witnesses. However, local police are still allowed to report foreign-born criminals to Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE). For example, the state of Maine passed a law which prevented State employees, including police, from inquiring about a person’s immigration status. However, there are certain exceptions written into the law and other similar resolutions including cases in which “investigating or prosecuting illegal activity other than mere status as an undocumented alien” and when police are “required by federal or state law or by court order or court rule to inquire about such person’s immigration status.” The law specifically states that “law enforcement officers shall continue to cooperate with federal authorities in investigating and apprehending aliens suspected of criminal activity.”

There are two 1996 laws, the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) which apply directly to the third exception. AEDPA authorized state and local police to arrest and detain undocumented immigrants who have re-entered the U.S. after being deported and who have “previously been convicted of a felony in the United States.” IIRIRA authorized state and local police to enforce civil immigration laws when the Attorney General determines that there is an “actual or imminent mass influx of aliens arriving off the coast of the United States, or near a land border.” IIRIRA does ban policies that prohibit public employees from reporting immigration-related information, but it doesn’t address policies that prevent police from inquiring about an individual’s immigration status.

In fact, IIRIRA specifically established a partnership program for law enforcement agencies that want to work with federal immigration agents to pursue immigration arrests. Section 287(g) permits “designated officers to perform immigration law enforcement functions” after they sign an agreement with and receive training from ICE. If local police were actually required to enforce immigration law, establishing an optional program that permits them to would be redundant and unecessary.

At the end of his interview today, Kobach argued that he drafted SB-1070 so that it is a “mirror image” of federal law. However, unlike federal law, SB-1070 not only requires local law enforcement to enforce immigration laws, it also allows residents to sue police who they believe are not complying with the law’s provisions. Many police chiefs have come out against the law, pointing out that it will destroy their already tenuous relationship with the immigrant community and that they don’t have the resources or training to enforce it in the first place. And as Attorney General Holder pointed out, “[t]here is a big difference between a state or locality saying they are not going to use their resources to enforce a federal law, as so-called sanctuary cities have done, and a state passing its own immigration policy that actively interferes with federal law.”