South Carolina puts brakes on immigration law

• Arizona started a wave of laws cracking down on undocumented immigrants living within its borders
• Four of the six bills have been gutted%2C but the core of the bills live on in Arizona and Georgia

South Carolina became the latest state to soften its crackdown on undocumented immigrants when state officials on Monday agreed to a settlement with groups that filed a lawsuit.

The state accepted an opinion by South Carolina Solicitor General Robert D. Cook that found that state and local police could not extend regular traffic stops so officers could determine the immigration status of suspects. The state's law, known as S.B. 20, allows officers to check the immigration status of people if a "reasonable suspicion" exists that they're in the country illegally.

Cook argued that once the original purpose of the traffic stop (or their stay in a local jail) was completed, officers could not continue holding the person to check their immigration status.

"Once the officer has completed the original purpose of the stop, the traffic stop should come to an end," Cook wrote.

A spokesman for South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said the settlement doesn't change the fact that states are being forced to grapple with the issue because the federal government has failed to fix the country's broken immigration system.

"Illegal immigration is still a serious issue in this state and this settlement doesn't change that or Governor Haley's position on the matter," said Haley spokesman Doug Mayer said. "The fact is, the federal government has completely failed to address this problem and until they do, South Carolina will continue doing what is necessary to uphold the laws of our state."

A federal judge must still approve the agreement.

Monday's announcement is the latest chapter in a four-year fight between states trying to get control of illegal immigration within their borders and immigration advocacy groups arguing that immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility. The battle erupted in 2010 with Arizona passing a bill expanding the ability of state and local officers to enforce immigration laws, and it lives on today, albeit more quietly, in court proceedings around the country.

Karen Tumlin, managing attorney for the National Immigration Law Center, one of the groups that has sued to block state immigration laws, said the decision in South Carolina is the latest example of how states delved too deeply into immigration enforcement, a federal priority. Of the six states that passed immigration laws in 2010 and 2011, South Carolina becomes the fourth to halt, or seriously scale back, enforcement of its law.

"This settlement sends a pretty powerful message both to states that are looking to enact their own Arizona-style policies ... and, more importantly, to representatives in Washington who are dreaming up ways to ramp up enforcement, that 'show me your papers' laws create more problems that they solve," Tumlin said. "The opinion shows that these policies can be implemented in only the most limited of ways and, even then, makes it easy to open the door to racial discrimination."

But Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has helped several states craft their immigration laws, said they have won key victories along the way. States can now require businesses to use E-Verify, a program that checks the immigration status of new hires. And he said the ability of two states - Arizona and Georgia - to continue using local officers to enforce immigration laws shows that their plans should survive legal scrutiny.

"These bills were overwhelmingly popular in their legislatures. The citizens of those states remain overwhelmingly supportive," Kobach said. "The only thing that happened in the four states is the open-borders side using the court to try and slow down legislation that the people are strongly in favor of. And to be perfectly frank, whether a state wins or loses depends heavily on which judge hears the case."

Arizona started things in 2010, when it passed S.B. 1070. That law required state and local officers to check the immigration status of suspects they had stopped for another reason.

Immigration advocacy groups and the U.S. Department of Justice sued Arizona, sparking a legal battle that ended with a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case. The Court blocked several portions of the law, including one that created a state crime for immigrants to fail to carry government registration papers. But it upheld the core section of the law, requiring officers to check the immigration status of people they encounter during routine traffic stops, and that law is currently in effect.

Arizona was followed by five other states, who passed similar laws in 2011.

Georgia's has had the most success, with a scaled-down version of the Arizona law still in effect there. But the four other states have not fared so well.

Alabama passed the toughest bill in the country, known as H.B. 56. The bill adopted the key provisions of Arizona's law, but added new provisions, such as one requiring parents to prove the citizenship status of their children while enrolling them for public school. But that law was gutted by several court decisions and the state agreed to a settlement in October that shut down the law and required the state to pay $350,000 in attorney fees to the groups that sued.

Indiana took a different tact with their law, which barred the use of consular identification cards by immigrants and allowed for the arrest of people who's immigration status was questionable. A judge last year permanently blocked enforcement of the law.

And Utah's immigration law remains blocked by courts as a legal battle continues. In a sign of how the situation has changed in Utah, even one of the original sponsors of their bill changed his mind and said the state went too far. State Rep. Stephen Sandstrom, a Republican who sponsored and rallied for the Arizona-style bill in 2011, later called it the "wrong approach" and urged a federal judge to block it.