(Radio Iowa) = Civil rights groups have filed a lawsuit seeking to block enforcement of an Iowa law that would let state officials arrest and deport immigrants who are in Iowa after previously being deported or denied entry to the country. The law is scheduled to take effect July 1st. Rita Bettis Austen is legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa.

“It is truly impossible to overstate how terrible this law is, how poorly written it is, how bizarre it is and how extreme it is,” Bettis Austen says. Iowa police do not have the ability to accurately determine a person’s current immigration status, according to Bettis Austen.  “We’ve heard that from law enforcement across the state directly,” she says. Kate Melloy Goettel, legal director with the American Immigration Council, says the law is unconstitutional.

“The crux of this lawsuit is that it challenges the state’s ability to create its own immigration system,” she says, “flouting more than a century of law that leaves that authority to the federal government.” One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit is a 68-year-old woman who has a green card and is living in Iowa today.  “She was deported to Mexico in 2005 and waited 17 years to be able to come back to the United States lawfully where her family resides,” Melloy Goettel says. “She has five kids and many grandchildren, most of whom live here in Iowa and she is under great stress and anxiety not knowing if she’s going to be prosecuted under this law.”

Rita Betis Austen. (photo from ACLU news conference)

Melloy Goettel says the law has no exceptions for people who have legal authority to be in the U-S now, but had been removed in the past. Erica Johnson, executive director of the Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice, says the law is creating fear among immigrant communities. “I think we can all agree that our immigration system needs improvement, but this law is no solution,” she says. “…It doesn’t matter now if they have authorization to be here, they can still be put in prison or deported at the border, often thousands of miles away from their home country.”

Governor Kim Reynolds says President Biden refuses to enforce immigration laws and she has a responsibility to protect the citizens of Iowa. Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird says states have to take matters into their own hands and she stands ready to defend the law in court.

The U-S Department of Justice announced late Thursday afternoon, that it also has sued the state to try to block the law from taking effect. A similar Texas law is on hold due to a federal lawsuit.