A group stands in front of the Tucson, Arizona section of the US-Mexico border.Matt York/AP

Arizona voters passed Proposition 314, a measure that would allow state and local police to arrest people crossing the border outside ports of entry and empower state judges to order deportations. The ballot measure passed with just over 62 percent of the vote. Advocates, including the ACLU of Arizona and the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, strongly condemned the measure, warning that it would open the door to racial profiling and the harassment of black people living in Arizona.

The law is likely to face challenges because immigration enforcement is a federal power, and similar state laws have been shot down in the past.

Arizona is no stranger to constitutionally questionable immigration laws. In 2012, the Supreme Court struck down most of Senate Bill 1070, which made it illegal to be undocumented in the state, ruling which states they don’t have the power to punish people for being in the country without documents.

In Texas, a similar bill that sought to allow Texas police to arrest people crossing the Mexican border outside the state’s ports of entry has been repeatedly blocked from taking effect due to legal challenges from the Justice Department and immigration advocacy groups supporting the law. violates the federal government’s sole authority over immigration.

The measures in Arizona and Texas are part of a growing number of anti-immigrant proposals from Republican state lawmakers across the country. The League of United Latin American Citizens — one of the largest Hispanic civil rights organizations in the country — found that state lawmakers have already proposed 233 anti-immigrant bills more than a month before Election Day, more than four times the 2020 total.