First lawsuit filed to challenge Arizona immigration law

PHOENIX — Anger mounted Thursday over an Arizona law cracking down on illegal immigration as a police officer sued to challenge it, governors in Texas and Colorado weighed in to oppose such a law, and a crowd in Chicago chanted for a boycott outside an Arizona Diamondbacks game.

The lawsuit from 15-year Tucson police veteran Martin Escobar was one of two filed Thursday, less than a week after Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed the law that critics claim is unconstitutional and will lead to profiling.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has said the federal government may challenge the law, which requires local and state law enforcement to question people about their immigration status if there's reason to suspect they're in the country illegally and which makes it a state crime to be in the United States illegally. The law is set to take effect by midsummer.

Brewer and other backers say the state law is necessary because of the federal government's failure to secure the border and growing anxiety over crime related to illegal immigration.

While debate over the law swirled nationwide, Arizona lawmakers approved several changes, including one that would strengthen restrictions in the law on using race or ethnicity as the basis for police questioning. The law's sponsor, Republican Sen. Russell Pearce, characterized the changes as clarifications "just to take away the silly arguments and the games."

Escobar, an overnight patrol officer in a Latino area of Tucson, said there's no way for officers to confirm people's immigration status without impeding investigations and that the new law violates constitutional rights.

Tucson police spokesman Sgt. Fabian Pacheco said Escobar acted on his own in suing.

The National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders also sued Thursday and sought an injunction preventing authorities from enforcing the law. The group said that federal law pre-empts state regulation of national borders and that Arizona's law violates due-process rights by letting police detain suspected illegal immigrants before they're convicted.

"Mexican Americans are not going to take this lying down," singer Linda Ronstadt, a Tucson native, said at a state Capitol news conference on another lawsuit planned by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the National Immigration Law Center.

At least three Arizona cities — Phoenix, Flagstaff and Tucson — are considering legal action to block the law.

About 40 immigrant-rights activists gathered outside Wrigley Field in Chicago on Thursday as the Cubs open a four-game series against the Arizona Diamondbacks. A small plane toting a banner criticizing the law circled the stadium, and activist George Lieu said they've sent a letter to Cubs management asking it to stop holding spring training in Arizona. A Cubs spokesman declined to comment.

The Mexico-based World Boxing Council said it will not schedule any bouts featuring Mexican fighters in Arizona, to protest what it called the state's "shameful, inhuman and discriminatory" immigration law.

At the University of Arizona in Tucson, a campuswide e-mail from school President Robert Shelton said families of several out-of-state honor students notified the university that they enrolled their children elsewhere.

The law sparked politicians and others to weigh in:

• Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, a Democrat who is leaving office next year, said he would veto a new law like the one in Arizona, weighing in after GOP candidates vying to replace him said they would support such a law. "That is not within the spirit of our law," Ritter said.

• In Texas, Republican Gov. Rick Perry said such a law would be wrong for his state, citing a tradition in his state of rejecting harsh anti-immigrant policies.

• Colombian singer Shakira visited Phoenix to meet the city's police chief and mayor; a spokesman for the singer said she was "concerned about the impact of this law on hardworking Latino families."

Material from the Los Angeles Times is included in this report.