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Immigration Law

Iowa immigration law making illegal reentry a misdemeanor blocked by 8th Circuit

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 29, 2025, 9:35 am CST

Iowa can’t enforce a law making it a crime for immigrants to be in the state if they reentered the country illegally after formerly being denied entry or ordered deported, a federal appeals court has ruled.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at St. Louis affirmed a preliminary injunction preventing the law from taking effect in a Jan. 24 opinion.

The law makes violations an aggravated misdemeanor and requires judges to order convicted immigrants to return to the foreign nation from which they entered or attempted to enter the United States.

U.S. District Judge Stephen H. Locher of the Southern District of Iowa had agreed with the Biden administration that the law is likely preempted by federal law.

In an opinion by Judge Duane Benton, the 8th Circuit affirmed.

The Iowa law is “an obstacle to the exercise of the discretion that Congress gives to federal officials charged with enforcing federal immigration law,” the 8th Circuit said. “Decisions about the removal of illegal aliens ‘touch on foreign relations and must be made with one voice,’” wrote Benton, quoting a former U.S. Supreme Court decision.

Benton is an appointee of former President George W. Bush. Other panel members are Judge Jonathan A. Kobes, an appointee of President Donald Trump during his first term, and Senior Judge Morris S. Arnold, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush.

The decision “may not be the final word,” the New York Times reports. “The panel’s preliminary ruling could be appealed, and the case has yet to go to trial on its merits at the district court. The U.S. Supreme Court could ultimately consider the question of whether states can enforce their own immigration laws, in a challenge to either the Iowa law or to similar measures passed in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas.”

Publications covering the order, besides the New York Times, include Courthouse News Service, Law360, the Iowa Capital Dispatch and the Des Moines Register.

The American Immigration Council and the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented an immigration legal services group also challenging the law, issued joint press releases (here and here).

The case is United States v. Iowa.

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