PHOENIX - Arizona asked an appeals court Thursday to lift a judge's order blocking most of the state's immigration law as the city of Phoenix filled with protesters, including 50 who were arrested for confronting officers in riot gear.
Republican Gov. Jan Brewer called U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton's decision Wednesday halting the law "a bump in the road," and the state appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Thursday.
Outside the state capitol, hundreds of protesters began marching at dawn, gathering in front of the federal courthouse where Bolton issued her ruling on Wednesday. They marched on to the office of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has made a crackdown on illegal immigration one of his signature issues.
"My deputies will arrest them and put them in pink underwear," Arpaio said, referring to one of his odd methods of punishment for prisoners. "Count on it."
Hundreds of people gathered at the door of the county jail, beating on the metal door, and at least 32 people were arrested, including a photographer for the Arizona Republic.
Dozens of others were arrested throughout the day trying to cross a police line, entering closed-off areas or sitting in the street and refusing to leave. Former state Sen. Alfredo Gutierrez, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2002, was among them.
Marchers chanted "Sheriff Joe, we are here, we will not live in fear," and in the crowd was a drummer wearing a papier-mache Sheriff Joe head and dressed in prison garb.
Arpaio vowed to go ahead with a crime sweep targeting illegal immigrants.
The Southwestern state is the U.S. epicenter of illegal immigration, with more than 400,000 undocumented residents. Arizona's border with Mexico is awash with smugglers and drugs that funnel narcotics and immigrants throughout the U.S., and the influx of illegal migrants drains vast sums of money from hospitals, education and other services.
Arizona argues that the federal government has failed to secure the border, and that it has a right to take matters into its own hands.
The ruling was anxiously awaited in the U.S. and beyond. About 100 protesters in Mexico City who had gathered at the U.S. Embassy broke into applause when they learned of the ruling via a laptop computer. Mariana Rivera, a 36-year-old from Zacatecas, Mexico, who is living in Phoenix on a work permit, said she heard about the ruling on a Spanish-language news program.
"I was waiting to hear because we're all very worried about everything that's happening," said Rivera, who phoned friends and family with the news. "Even those with papers, we don't go out at night at certain times there's so much fear (of police). You can't just sit back and relax."
In Tucson, between 50 and 100 people gathered at a downtown street corner to both protest and defend the new law on Thursday morning. Tucson police spokeswoman Linda Galindo said one man was arrested for threatening people in the other group.
In Los Angeles, about 200 protesters invaded a busy intersection west of downtown. Police waited more than three hours before declaring it an unlawful assembly. Most of the demonstrators left peacefully, but about a dozen, linked together with plastic pipes and chains, lay in the street in a circle as an act of civil disobedience. Officer Bruce Borihanh said police were cutting their chains and taking them away to be booked for failure to disperse.
In New York City, about 300 immigrant advocates gathered Thursday near the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan.
Bolton indicated the government has a good chance at succeeding in its argument that federal immigration law trumps state law. But the key sponsor of Arizona's law, Republican Rep. Russell Pearce, said the judge was wrong and predicted the state would ultimately win the case.
In her temporary injunction, Bolton delayed the most contentious provisions of the law, including a section that required officers to check a person's immigration status while enforcing other laws. She also barred enforcement of parts requiring immigrants to carry their papers and banned illegal immigrants from soliciting employment in public places — a move aimed at day labourers that congregate in large numbers in parking lots across Arizona. The judge also blocked officers from making warrantless arrests of suspected illegal immigrants.
Other provisions that were less contentious were allowed to take effect Thursday, including a section that bars cities in Arizona from disregarding federal immigration laws.
Opponents of the law said the ruling sends a strong message to other states hoping to replicate the law. Lawmakers or candidates in as many as 18 states say they want to push similar measures when their legislative sessions start up again in 2011.
But a lawmaker in Utah said the state will likely take up a similar laws anyway.
"The ruling ... should not be a reason for Utah to not move forward," said Utah state Rep. Carl Wimmer, a Republican. He said he plans to co-sponsor a bill similar to Arizona's next year.
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Contributing to this report were Associated Press Writers Michelle Price, Paul Davenport and Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix, and Sara Kugler Frazier in New York.