by Julianne Hing for Colorlines.com
Families are fleeing Alabama, teachers are comforting the panicked children who are still in school, and crops are rotting in the state’s fields. Welcome to life in Alabama in the age of HB 56.
Just three weeks after Alabama began enforcing what’s been called the nation’s strictest anti-immigrant state law, the country is beginning to see just what happens when states create and enforce their own restrictive immigration policies. While the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an emergency stay that blocked the state from enforcing a provision mandating public schools track the immigration statuses of their students, other provisions are still in effect, including one that requires law enforcement officers to ask for a person’s papers if they have “reasonable suspicion” to believe they’re in the country without legal status.
Last Friday, the Department of Justice headed down to Alabama and….
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