Gingrich blasts Obama challenge of South Carolina immigration law

Newt Gingrich is denouncing a move by the Obama Administration to sue the state of South Carolina in hopes of overturning a controversial immigration law, calling the move "an outrage."

The South Carolina law requires police to call federal immigration authorities following a traffic stop or arrest if an officer suspects a person of being in the country illegal, and mandates that all employers verify the immigration status of new hires through the federal E-Verify system.

But the Justice Department said Monday that South Carolina's laws "are unconstitutional and interfere with the federal government’s authority to set and enforce immigration policy" and "clearly conflicts with the policies and priorities adopted by the federal government" in a press release.

Gingrich denounced the move, saying South Carolina was simply trying to account for poor immigration enforcement by federal officials.

"After years of failure on the part of the federal government to achieve border security, it is an outrage that the Obama Administration would seek to block South Carolina and other states who choose to pick up the slack."

Attorney General Eric Holder said that states who imposed their own immigration procedures threatened the federal government's ability to implement its own border enforcement.

“It is understandable that communities remain frustrated with the broken immigration system, but a patchwork of state laws is not the solution and will only create problems," Holder said in a statement. "We will continue to monitor the impact these laws might have on our communities and will evaluate each law to determine whether it conflicts with the federal government’s enforcement responsibilities."

But Gingrich accused the administration of not addressing the problem of immigration seriously.

"If the Obama Administration put as much energy and resources into controlling the border as it does into attacking our own states, we would have 100% border security by now," Gingrich said. "The fact that there are just as many Department of Homeland Security bureaucrats in Washington, DC as there are border patrol agents at our southern border demonstrates how unserious the Administration is about addressing these problems."

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