Lawsuits target Arizona law amid calls for boycotts

PHOENIX — Backlash against a new Arizona law cracking down on illegal immigration is broadening from the political arena as opponents file lawsuits, entertainers and other countries denounce the measure and protesters chant for a boycott of the state at an Arizona Diamondbacks baseball game in Chicago.

A lawsuit from 15-year Tucson police veteran Martin Escobar was one of three filed Thursday, less than a week after Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed the bill that critics claim is unconstitutional and fear will lead to racial profiling.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has said the federal government may challenge the law, which requires local and state law enforcement to question people about their immigration status if there's reason to suspect they're in the country illegally, and makes it a state crime to be in the United States illegally.

Brewer and other backers say the state law is necessary because of the federal government's failure to secure the border and growing anxiety over crime related to illegal immigration.

But chances the federal government will step in this year seemed slim. President Barack Obama, who has called the Arizona law misguided, said lawmakers may lack the "appetite" to take on immigration while many of them are up for re-election and while another big legislative issue — climate change — is already on their plate.

"I don't want us to do something just for the sake of politics that doesn't solve the problem," Obama told reporters Wednesday night aboard Air Force One.

Entertainers entered the fray Thursday, with Colombian singer Shakira visiting Phoenix to meet the city's police chief and mayor amid her concerns the measure would violate human and civil rights.

"It goes against all human dignity." she said of the law.

"Mexican-Americans are not going to take this lying down," singer Linda Ronstadt, a Tucson native, said at a news conference on a lawsuit planned by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the National Immigration Law Center.

And at the Billboard Latin Music Awards ceremony in Puerto Rico, singer Ricky Martin denounced the law, saying it "makes no sense."