Iowa justices hear Muscatine woman’s immigration case

DES MOINES - A Muscatine woman's case that involves federal immigration law was heard Thursday by the Iowa Supreme Court.

The court heard oral arguments from defense lawyers for Martha Martinez, of Muscatine, whose case tests the limits of the federal program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.

Martinez, who immigrated to the U.S. with her family in 1999 when she was 11, is enrolled in DACA, which protects those who came to the United States as children from being deported.

In 2014, Martinez applied for an Iowa driver's license, which also is permitted under DACA.

The state transportation department's facial recognition software, however, recognized that Martinez had, as a teenager, applied for a state identification card under a false name.

The Muscatine County Attorney charged Martinez with fraud and forgery. But Martinez's lawyers argue federal immigration law pre-empts such charges.

'This case boils down to one thing: Muscatine County cannot have and enforce its own immigration policy,” said Jack Hathaway, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union arguing on Martinez's behalf.

Philip Mears, an Iowa City-based attorney representing Martinez, said the case 'threatens the very process of that DACA program.”

Federal authorities, Mears said, are 'the ones that get to decide whether to do it or not, not some county attorney in Muscatine.”

Attorneys for Martinez cited a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision that largely upheld the federal government's authority to set immigration policy.

But at Thursday's oral arguments, Darrel Mullins, with the Iowa Attorney General's Office, argued that the U.S. Supreme Court decision protects immigrants from being charged while trying to get a job, but not from other charges, and that other state courts have ruled as much.

'I think the later cases indicate once you do get further away from the effort at obtaining employment, then we are less and less likely to see ... pre-emption (of federal jurisdiction),” Mullins said.

The justices will issue a ruling at a later date.