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Missouri city in federal court for IIRA
Friday, 03 November 2006
By KENT JACKSON
Standard-Speaker

A small Missouri city that adopted Hazleton’s Illegal Immigration Relief Act also faces a lawsuit.

Valley Park officials are scheduled to appear in federal court in St. Louis today for the latest hearing on a challenge to their law.

In a similar case filed against Hazleton, a federal judge Tuesday imposed an order preventing enforcement of the law for 14 days.

The laws in Valley Park and Hazleton fine landlords for renting to illegal immigrants and strip business licenses from firms that hire illegal immigrants.

Around the nation, Riverside, N.J; Farmers Branch, Texas; Avon Park, Fla.; Escondido, Calif.; Gadsden, Ala.; Sandwich, Mass.; and Arcadia, Wis.; are among the places that considered or adopted local immigration ordinances modeled after Hazleton’s law, which in turn was based on a proposal from San Bernardino, Calif.

Valley Park Mayor Jeffrey Whitteaker said he proposed the law after hearing Hazleton Mayor Louis Barletta on a Missouri radio program.
“It reminded me of a lot of what was being talked about in the city of Valley Park,” Whitteaker said.

“I got a copy of the Hazleton ordinance and took it back to Valley Park.”
Valley Park had 6,518 people of whom 6.2 percent were foreign-born and 8.4 percent spoke a language other than English, according to the 2000 Census.

Since then, more people have moved into Valley Park. Many of them work for local landscaping firms and speak Spanish, Whitteaker said.
“Overcrowding was the first main issue of rental property. We’ve had many cases of drunk driving, leaving the scene of an accident, having no driver’s license,” Whitteaker said.

The Valley Park law states legal residents “have the right to live in peace free of the threat of crime, to enjoy police services provided by the city without being burdened by the cost of providing goods, support and services to aliens unlawfully present in the United States.”

Valley Park adopted Hazleton’s initial immigration ordinance, and when Hazleton changed its law, Valley Park adopted a new law incorporating the changes.

Opponents that include the American Civil Liberties Union, a Catholic clergy group and attorneys from law schools and firms in the St. Louis area obtained temporary restraining orders each time Valley Park adopted an immigration law.

Today’s hearing is to decide whether the case that they filed to overturn the law will proceed in federal or state court and whether Whitteaker and the eight aldermen, all of whom voted for the law, must give depositions.
The suit claims Valley Park isn’t empowered to regulate immigration and that the law violates portions of the Missouri and United State constitutions.

Missouri law requires landlords to give 30 days notice before displacing tenants.

Under Valley Park’s law, fines start if landlords don’t displace renters in three days, said attorney Linda Martinez of Bryan Cave, a law firm helping groups opposed to the Valley Park law.

Martinez said her clients include business owners and a housing agency that tried to relocate people from Valley Park.

“This is a potentially devastating ordinance,” she said.

Landlords who are among those bringing the suit against Valley Park have trouble renting and re-leasing properties, Martinez said, and businesses, such as a delicatessen owned by one plaintiff, report a drop-off.
There have been other effects from the law, Martinez said.

Last week, federal immigration authorities took a man who is in the United States legally from his home in handcuffs because he allegedly failed to pay parking tickets.

“It turned out that he paid the tickets,” Martinez said.