On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a preliminary injunction stopping an attempt by Gov. Kim Reynolds and Republican leaders in the legislature to create a state-level deportation program in Iowa. SF 2340, passed with only Republican votes, made it a state crime for a person to be in Iowa if they have previously been denied entry into the U.S., or been deported or otherwise removed from the country.
State and local law enforcement were supposed to enforce the new law, and it authorized Iowa judges to issue deportation orders to have people removed from the state and transported to the nearest port of entry for expulsion from the country.
People found in violation of the law also faced the possibility of a fine of at least $855 and imprisonment of up to two years.
“SF2340 is the worst anti-immigrant law in Iowa’s history,” Rita Bettis Austen, legal director of the ACLU of Iowa, said in a statement after the appeals court issued its ruling.
Before the new law could go into effect, the ACLU of Iowa, along with the American Immigration Council and the Immigrants Rights Project of the national ACLU, filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice (Iowa MMJ) and its members, as well as two individuals identified in the lawsuit as Jane Doe and Elizabeth Roe.
Iowa MMJ is a statewide membership-based nonprofit that advocates on behalf of and provides legal services to immigrants. Both Doe and Roe are legal residents of the United States. But because both were barred from entrance in the U.S. in the past, they would be subject to arrest and having a judge issue a deportation order, despite being in the country legally, if SF 2340 went into effect.
“The court’s decision confirms that key members of our community should never have been criminalized simply for being here and living their lives in peace,” Erica Johnson, Iowa MMMJ’s executive director, said in a statement on Thursday. “This ruling restores a sense of safety and dignity to people who call Iowa home.”
The unprecedented scale of the Trump administration’s often violent deportation campaign since January has overshadowed the years Gov. Reynolds spent stoking fears about immigration. During the four years of the Biden administration, she routinely used those fears to attack Biden, sometimes including criticism of immigration policy in official statements about subjects that had nothing to do with immigration.
When SF 2340 was passed last spring — as the presidential election was in full swing — Reynolds and Iowa Republicans said it was needed to protect Iowans from people living the state illegally as a result of Biden’s failures.
“Those who come into our country illegally have broken the law, yet Biden refuses to deport them,” Reynolds wrote in her signing statement for SF 2340. “This bill gives Iowa law enforcement the power to do what he is unwilling to do: enforce immigration laws already on the books.”
Representatives of Iowa law enforcement made it clear at the time they opposed the new law.
“Playing politics with public safety never helps public safety,” Marshalltown’s then-Chief of Police Michael Tupper said in a statement. (Tupper retired earlier this year.) “This law will make the job of law enforcement more difficult. It will diminish public safety because it will cause people to fear the police needlessly. This law has severely harmed community relationships that took decades to build.”
U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Locher recognized the political element of SF 2304 when he issued a preliminary injunction stopping its enforcement in June 2024.
“As a matter of politics, the new legislation might be defensible,” Locher wrote in the opening paragraph of his 28-page ruling. “As a matter of constitutional law, it is not.”
Locher’s decision was not a surprise. More than a century of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, the most recent issued in 2012, establish the federal government as the sole authority in matters of immigration.
The three-judge panel agreed with Locher that Iowa MMJ and the other two plaintiffs were likely to succeed in proving that SF 2340 is an unconstitutional usurpation of federal power. But the panel sent the case back to district court to resolve the question of exactly who is covered by the injunction.
Locher did not specify in his ruling if the injunction had universal application, protecting everyone from SF 2340, or if it just protects the plaintiffs in the case, i.e., the members of Iowa MMJ, Doe and Roe. The appellate judges said that determination needs to be made at the district court.
This was the second time the 8th Circuit has upheld Locher’s injunction against SF 2304. The U.S. Department of Justice sued to stop Iowa’s attempt to claim federal immigration powers for itself on the same day Iowa MMJ filed its lawsuit. Locher combined the two cases, but the 8th Circuit decided to separate them, considering the DOJ’s case and dismissing Iowa MMJ’s as duplicative. It revived Iowa MMJ’s case after the Trump administration withdrew the DOJ’s lawsuit.
The impact of the change in administrations from Biden to Trump was also highlighted in a second story on Thursday involving Iowa MMJ.
The immigrant rights group issued a news release revealing that a Des Moines high school student had been seized by ICE and deported to Central America. Iowa MMJ did not provide the name of the student, the school he attended or the name of the country to which he was deported, citing privacy concerns.
“He is a good boy who has lived through some hard things,” the student’s guardian, who asked to remain anonymous, said in Iowa MMJ’s news release. “He was abandoned by his parents when he was little and lived with his grandmother. He came to Iowa seeking safety and a chance to reunite with his family. He was working hard to learn English and do well in school, he was an important member of our family and was key to helping us survive. He didn’t deserve to be taken by ICE.”
According to the news release, the 18-year-old student “was taken by ICE agents during his immigration check-in at the Federal Building in downtown Des Moines.”
“The Des Moines High School student and his guardian attended this routine appointment accompanied by immigrants’ rights advocates. ICE agents decided to detain him briefly in the Federal Building before transferring him to Hardin County jail and later to a detention center in Louisiana. His guardian briefly talked to him 4 days after he was detained but didn’t hear from him again until after he was deported.”
Detaining and rapidly deporting immigrants who are complying with the conditions of their release by attending routine check-ins has become a standard ICE tactic since Donald Trump returned to office. It’s common for ICE to carry out these deportations without providing any reason for why the person is being removed from the country.
“ICE is hurting our communities,” Iowa MMJ’s Erica Johnson said. “They’re arresting, detaining and disappearing children, community leaders, workers and fathers.”
In response to media inquiries, Des Moines Public Schools issued a statement about the student’s case.
Des Moines Public Schools is aware that one of our high school students was detained by federal immigration authorities late last month. This situation did not occur on or near school property.
We understand that news like this can cause concern among our students, families, and staff. Our schools are committed to being safe, welcoming places for every student with principals, teachers and staff who care about their well-being.
Iowa MMJ said that “advocates are asking Iowa’s members of Congress to step in and reunite him with his guardian while continuing to find a legal pathway that will protect him.”
Escucha Mi Voz, an eastern Iowa-based immigrants’ right group, has made similar requests in the case of Pascual Pedro Pedro, a 20-year-old West Liberty resident who was seized by ICE during a routine check-in at the agency’s Cedar Rapids office at the beginning of July, and deported to Guatemala a few days later. Pedro, who was living with his grandparents, had been in U.S. for seven years. During that time he completed high school, received legal authorization to work and was gainfully employed. Pedro had never been accused a crime or antisocial behavior, and ICE has never provided a reason why agents seized him and denied his requests to speak to an immigration judge.
Pedro’s family, his parish priest and Escucha Mi Voz have asked Sen. Grassley, Sen. Ernst, Rep. Miller-Meeks and Rep. Hinson to press Pedro’s case with the Trump administration in order to allow him to return to his family home in West Liberty. They have not.
