A group sits in front of the Tucson, Arizona section of the U.S.-Mexico border.Matt York/AP

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

The law will likely face challenges because immigration enforcement is a federal power, and similar state laws have been canceled 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 who declares I don’t have the power to punish people who stay in the country without papers.

In Texas, a similar bill that aimed to allow Texas police to arrest people crossing the Mexican border outside of points of entry into the state was repeatedly blocked from taking effect due to legal challenges from the Justice Department and immigration advocacy groups that say the law encroaches on the federal government’s sole authority over immigration.

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