"Where is the preemption if everybody who is arrested for some crime has their immigration status checked?"

Asked U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton in the hearing on the lawsuit about the Arizona immigration law:

"Why can't Arizona be as inhospitable as they wish to people who have entered or remained in the United States?" U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton asked in a pointed exchange with Deputy Solicitor General Edwin S. Kneedler....

Kneedler's response was that Arizona acted "in, frankly, an unprecedented and dramatic way."

"It is not for one of our states to be inhospitable in the way this statute does."

I'm not looking at the whole transcript, but I'm puzzling over this idea of preemption that depends on the degree of drama.

Kneedler also cited "very concrete harms, very substantial foreign policy concerns," which gave Arizona's lawyer, John J. Bouma, the opportunity to zing: "Foreign outrage doesn't make the law preempted."