Late last year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a measure that many likened to maybe the most controversial law ever passed in Arizona: SB 1070. The 2010 immigration measure was dubbed the "show me your papers" law and it sparked protests and boycotts in Arizona far and wide.
The U.S. Supreme Court largely gutted the law but now, Texas’s SB 4 is bringing up memories of what many call a stain on Arizona’s history. The only thing is, SB 4 doesn’t seem to be evoking the same kind of vitriol in Texas as 1070 did here more than a decade ago.
While immigration is legally under federal control, SB 4 makes it a state crime in Texas to cross illegally between ports of entry — where 83% of migrant apprehensions take place. It also allows state judges to order deportations, bypassing immigration courts, and it indemnifies officers who apprehend migrants there.
Terry Greene Sterling is a longtime Arizona journalist who has covered the border and immigration here for decades. She’s co-author of the book "Driving While Brown: Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the Latino Resistance" and she joined The Show and told us that SB 4 has also been likened to another controversial immigration policy.
TERRY GREENE STERLING: It's been likened to Title 42. And the reason it's been likened to Title 42, which was lifted by the Biden administration earlier in 2023. The reason it has been likened to Title 42 is because it doesn't offer migrants the opportunity to have their day in immigration court.
LAUREN GILGER: Right. And Title 42 it was sort of this policy that allowed officers, immigration officers to very quickly and without any process return migrants across the border. So this is likened to Title 42. But much of the conversation around this, many of the headlines around SB 4 have been that it's reminiscent of Arizona's own SB 1070, which was a big and controversial law that was largely thrown out by the Supreme Court more than a decade ago. So let's go back to that then and tell us what exactly SB 1070 did.
STERLING: All right. Senate Bill 1070 made it a crime for all immigrants not to carry papers. It required police to check the immigration status of each person that they come in contact with if they have a reasonable suspicion that the person is in Arizona illegally. And that had a lot of other provisions. For instance, It allowed citizens to sue state police who didn't enforce immigration.
GILGER: That's why it was sort of the, the show me your papers law is what it was like. How is this law then, different from 1070? Do you think this is a fair sort of likening?
STERLING: Well, I think they're both extreme in their own ways. And I think what's really important for us is to go back a little bit in history and understand the context of SB 1070, and then understand the context of the passage of Senate Bill 4.
GILGER: So let's talk about that because this was nearly 15 years ago, 2010, when SB 1070 passed here, I was like a student journalist. And I remember like the massive reaction that 1070 received. You covered this extensively at the time. You've covered it extensively since. But this was not even just national outrage, internationally it was a big deal, right?
STERLING: SB 1070 was a big deal, and many Republicans had a concern that it went too far. Many Republicans in the state House had a concern that it was too extreme. But then there was a moment in time that enabled the passage of SB 1070 in the Legislature. And that was when a rancher was murdered on the border. An American rancher was murdered on his ranch on the border. And the murder was widely blamed on a faceless undocumented immigrant who never surfaced, who has never surfaced in all these years, that crime remains unsolved. And that outrage that came from the murder of an American on his own property prompted the passage of SB 1070. And immediately the reaction was, as you said, national, international and local. One of the very important differences between Senate Bill 4 and SB 1070 is that all the reaction and the fighting and the opposition to SB 1070 most of it was based in Maricopa County. And we already had a very, very vibrant, well organized group of activists who opposed it. And they had been organized because of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who had rounded up immigrants and had been accused and later found guilty in court of racial profiling of people with brown skin. So Arpaio was by then sort of receding into the background by the time SB 1070 was passed. But we had this vibrant group of activists, this very well organized group of activists, and they were very effective and they had, you know, rock stars came to Phoenix and led these massive marches against SB 1070. They, these activists coordinate with national activists all over the country. National media swept into Phoenix. I remember being down at the Capitol and seeing rows and rows of trucks from, you know, TV trucks from all over the country. Conventions were boycotted, businesses lost money.
GILGER: So that's the landscape around immigration in Arizona nearly 15 years ago. And the sort of reason why we saw maybe that massive reaction to 1070. Why do you think that is not happening largely in, in reaction to SB 4 in Texas today.
STERLING: I think we're at a different point in history. And I think there's some geographical differences and some cultural differences that have happened that have kind of prevented the same kind of activism, the same kind of outrage. First of all, we are at a time in history when there is an unprecedented surge of migration to our southern border. And we didn't have that at that point in Arizona, we had more migrants crossing into Arizona than any place else. But we didn't have these numbers. So 3.1 million attempted border crossings in the fiscal year from 2022 to 2023, and 83% were between the ports of entry, 600,000 are estimated to have gotten away, 1.8 million have stayed. This is all in the New York Times. 1.5 million new cases were added to the Immigration Court. So we're at the point where everything is broken. The asylum system doesn't work. The border patrol is overwhelmed. The immigration courts are overwhelmed and we're bogged down. We weren't at that point in Arizona 15 years ago. The other thing I think is that all the foment for SB 1070 originated in Maricopa County, which is a very small space compared to Texas and the Texas border. In fact, the other thing that's happening is that activist groups in Texas are so overwhelmed with taking care of the migrants, giving them food, giving them medical care, helping them find transportation. All the these things are so consuming them that they can't fight politically with the same fervor that we had in Maricopa County. They're just not as organized as we were in Maricopa County. We talked about how there were two moments in history that sort of galvanized the Legislature and allowed the passage of these extreme bills. In Arizona, again, it was the murder of the rancher, in my opinion, and the popularity of Joe Arpaio, the political popularity that made, made him have a lot of imitators in the Legislature. But in Texas, it is just the sheer numbers, just the sheer numbers of people crossing the border.
GILGER: And the sense that something has to change.
STERLING: And the sense among many that something has to change and something has to be fixed. And the irony is that the passage of these local immigration laws in fact deflect attention from the fact that Congress has got to fix the system.
GILGER: Right. I wanted to ask you about that and how you think these local laws like 1070 at the time and like SB 4 now sort of contribute to or maybe detract from the effort in Congress, which has been perennial but never successful to complete some kind of immigration reform.
STERLING: Well, they very much do. I mean, because all the focus goes on the state laws and those state laws are, you know, go through a long process of being challenged in the courts. SB 4 is being challenged not only by the federal government but also by local activists like the ACLU. And so, you know, it's just, it's a distraction, it's a distraction, and we don't know how the courts are going to rule. That might be a difference between SB 1070 again and Senate Bill 4. We're pretty sure that SB 4 is going to go to the Supreme Court. And SB 1070 went to the Supreme Court. But one of the differences is the makeup of the court. We don't know if this more conservative court is going to follow judicial precedent and say, "hey, the federal government has to enforce immigration and the states cannot." Or we don't know if the Supreme Court is going to break with precedent and say, "well, this is the state's issue. This is the state's issue because it impacts the States the most." We just don't know. So that's a big difference too.
GILGER: We'll have to watch for what happens there. All right, Terry Greene Sterling, longtime Arizona journalist and co-author of "Driving While Brown: Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the Latino Resistance." Terry, thank you so much for coming in. I appreciate it.
STERLING: Oh, thank you so much.
