Barletta team vows appeal
HAZLETON — A disappointed yet undeterred Mayor Lou Barletta called the federal ruling striking down the city’s illegal immigration law a “slip, not a fall.”
“This fight is far from over,” the mayor said Thursday. “Hazleton will not back down.”
Kris Kobach, a part of the city’s legal team that defended the Illegal Immigration Relief Act, joined Barletta on the steps of city hall about three hours after U.S. District Judge James M. Munley handed down his decision. Kobach termed the ruling “the paradigm of judicial activism,” and pledged he would argue the city’s case through the court system for free if necessary.
Kobach picked apart the 206-page decision. He called the ruling “extraordinary” and said it “will not stand up under appeal.”
Barletta and Kobach vowed the city will appeal the decision to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.
“Today’s decision shows the size challenge a small city like Hazleton, Pennsylvania, faces when it chooses to take on the powerful, well-funded special interest groups and lobbyists,” the mayor said. “As we have seen over the past week or so both in Hazleton and around the country, illegal immigration is a very important issue to many, many Americans. Sadly, today’s decision sends the wrong message to elected officials in Washington and elsewhere.”
The ruling did not catch the city by surprise, the mayor and his attorney said.“It was clear we were not only battling (the plaintiffs in the case), but a hostile court as well,” Kobach said.
Kobach pointed to Munley’s decision to allow 10 plaintiffs in the country illegally to file anonymous depositions rather than testify as an example. He said the decision allowed them to “do things a legal U.S. citizen cannot do.”
“A legal U.S. citizen cannot sue a city and remain anonymous,” Kobach said. “But that is what this judge has allowed in this case.”
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