Illegal marijuana farms, human trafficking, and opioid distribution: these are just some of the criminal activities “fueled by illegal immigrants” that Oklahoma’s attorney general is citing as he appeals a judge’s order halting the state from enforcing its new immigration law.

Oklahoma’s House Bill 4156, allowing state police to detain and arrest illegal immigrants, is one of several state efforts mimicking a Texas law, Senate Bill 4, that makes illegal entry a state-level crime. As Texas’ law has been the subject of a months-long legal battle — and is presently being weighed by a federal appeals court — the Biden administration also sued Iowa and Oklahoma for their copycat laws. 

Another legal dispute is unfolding in Arizona over a similar state-level immigration enforcement effort, in the form of a ballot measure for November that seeks to make illegal entry a state crime and allow state judges to deport migrants. A state judge last week held that Arizona’s ballot measure was constitutional, but Latino advocacy groups are appealing the decision in a last-ditch effort to block it.

As several states attempt to take immigration matters into their own hands, Republican leaders have repeatedly said the federal government’s lack of immigration enforcement has forced them to step in. 

“The Biden Administration’s complete and utter failure to address the border crisis has given Oklahoma no option but to take steps necessary to ensure public safety,” Oklahoma’s attorney general, Gentner Drummond, said while announcing the appeal to the Tenth Circuit Court of an order from a district court that halted Oklahoma’s law. “House Bill 4156 is a powerful tool to counter criminal activity largely being fueled by illegal immigrants coming to our state.”

Mr. Drummond’s office maintains that the state’s immigration reform law is “designed to crack down on the state’s illegal marijuana farms by enabling state law enforcement to detain and incarcerate illegal immigrants, many of whom wind up working in these clandestine operations.” Since Oklahoma legalized medical marijuana in 2018, his office said, “Chinese crime syndicates and Mexican drug cartels have exploited the law to pursue black-market marijuana, human trafficking, opioid distribution and other illegal activities.”

The Biden administration, in its lawsuit against Oklahoma, argued it was seeking to “preserve its exclusive authority under federal law to regulate the entry, reentry, and presence of noncitizens” — which the Justice Department has also said in its lawsuits against Iowa and Texas. 

Citing the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision in Arizona v. United States — precedent which has been central to the legal debate in all of the state lawsuits so far — the Biden administration’s filing notes that it has “broad, undoubted power over the subject of immigration and the status of [noncitizens]” and that state law must give way. 

Oklahoma’s law “frustrates the United States’ immigration operations” and “interferes with U.S. foreign relations,” the Biden administration argues, noting that the state immigration law violates the Supremacy Clause and the dormant Foreign Commerce Clause, “which limits the power of the States to regulate the international movement of persons.”

When a district judge blocked Oklahaoma’s law in June, he acknowledged that the state “undoubtedly ‘bears many of the consequences of unlawful immigration,’” including organized crime, drug cartels, sex trafficking, and local police and governmental entities being strained of resources as a result. 

“Oklahoma places the blame for this crisis squarely on the current presidential administration,” Judge Bernard Jones— an appointee of President Trump — wrote. “Criminal activity associated with unlawful immigration is not, however, a recent phenomenon,” he said, noting that Arizona had similar frustrations at the time of the 2012 Supreme Court case, well before the Biden administration. 

“Oklahoma ‘may have understandable frustrations with the problems caused by illegal immigration … but the State may not pursue policies that undermine federal law,’” he concluded. As Oklahoma appeals that judge’s order, and as legal disputes persist in Iowa, Texas, and Arizona, more pressure could build on the Supreme Court to take up the issue and potentially even revisit its 2012 decision in Arizona.