nytimes.com
Surprising Immigration Crackdown Advances
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
Published: June 10, 2010


Renata Teodoro at a vigil protesting the Massachusetts immigration measure, which gained support after Arizona passed its tough law.

BOSTON — Lawmakers were tangled in budget talks inside the Massachusetts Statehouse this week, but a 19-year-old college student spent even more time at the gold-domed building on Beacon Hill.

Andres Del Castillo, who just finished his freshman year at Suffolk University in Boston, is holding a vigil on the Statehouse steps to protest what could be the state’s harshest crackdown on illegal immigrants in decades. The plan, already approved by the Senate, must survive budget negotiations with the House to become law.

And while Arizona’s tough new immigration policy seemed largely irrelevant here when it passed in April — both legislative chambers are controlled by Democrats who typically pay scant attention to the issue, and Bill O’Reilly of Fox News has derided Massachusetts as a “sanctuary stateâ€