SALT LAKE CITY - Senate Bill 81 was recently signed into law and it gives officers the ability to question the citizenship status of those they pull over. Latino leaders in Utah are concerned about the new law. Latino leaders from all over the Beehive State gathered for an emergency meeting to discuss the implications of the new law. FOX 13\'s Candice Gale spoke to one of the leaders, Tony Yapias.

The day after a new Utah immigration law went into effect, community leaders on Thursday told Latinos to obey the law but report any perceived harassment or profiling by police. SB81, among other provisions, allows police officers to become federal immigration agents, though no departments or sheriff\'s offices have said they will do so.

On the day after Utah\'s sweeping new immigration laws went into effect, members of the immigrant community gathered in Salt Lake City to voice their concerns about the new statutes — and to find out if they can expect to be targeted when they come into contact with law enforcement officers. Representatives of community groups, an immigration lawyer and a federal immigration enforcement agent fielded questions and offered clarifications on what police can and cannot do under the new rules. Immigration attorney Mark Alvarez urged those in attendance not to overreact.

Leaders of the Latino community held an emergency meeting Thursday. Many immigrants are afraid of what the new law, formerly Senate Bill 81, means for law enforcement and them during a routine traffic stop. Now Hispanic community leader Tony Yapias says Utah has it\'s first case of racial profiling thanks to enforcement of the new law. Yapias says an officer in Utah County went too far Thursday morning when he stopped a mother and son near Benjamin because they were driving with their lights on high-beam.

BENJAMIN, Utah (ABC 4 News)- SB81 is now the law, but is what happened in Utah County an abuse of power? Some people in the Latino community think so. A mother and her son were pulled over for shining their high beam headlights. They were questioned about their citizenship and then arrested. It happened near Benjamin before dawn Thursday morning.

An emergency meeting was held this morning in the Latino community after SB 81 went into effect yesterday. Tony Yapias with Proyecto Latino de Utah says right now there are no cross deputized law enforcement officials in our state. He says that means no police officers or deputies should be asking people about their immigration status, which is what the law was written to do.

Immigration authorities had bad news this week for American Apparel, the T-shirt maker based in downtown Los Angeles: About 1,800 of its employees appeared to be illegal immigrants not authorized to work in the United States. But in contrast to the high-profile raids that marked the enforcement approach of the Bush administration, no federal agents with criminal warrants stormed the company’s factories and rounded up employees. Instead, the federal immigration agency sent American Apparel a written notice that it faced civil fines and would have to fire any workers confirmed to be unauthorized.

PHOENIX (AP) — With many members absent, the Arizona House early Wednesday defeated a bill to criminalize the presence of all illegal immigrants in the state and draw local police officers deeper into the fight against illegal immigration. The House voted 26-15 for the bill Wednesday morning, but the “yes” votes were five short of the 31 needed for passage by the 60-member chamber. The Senate approved the bill 16-11 earlier Wednesday morning. The bill would have made Arizona the only state to criminalize the presence of illegal immigrants through an expansion of its trespassing law.

HOUSTON -- In light of unsettling unemployment figures released Thursday, consider buying one of the estimated 8 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. a beer this Fourth of July. The effects of 9.5% unemployment would be worse without them, says Gordon Hanson, director of the Center on Pacific Economies at the University of California San Diego, describing illegal immigrants as \"shock absorbers.\"

A day that will live in infamy in Utah history? Probably not. The wise resistance offered by law enforcement agencies, and a compassionate interpretation of the new state law as it relates to social services, have blunted the negative impacts of anti-immigration legislation that took effect Wednesday. Still, it was not a day to be proud of. Pandering to nativists and acting on their baser instincts, Utah lawmakers approved Senate Bill 81 in 2008, and stifled efforts to delay its implementation this year. Hotter heads prevailed.

When the Martinez family drives the half-hour from home into Nashville, wife Deanna is behind the wheel every time. It\'s not because of some standing debate between husband and wife about who is the better driver. It\'s because Deanna Martinez\'s husband is one of the estimated 130,000 to 170,000 illegal immigrants living in Tennessee.

Federal officials on Wednesday announced plans to audit the immigration and employment paperwork of 652 businesses across the country, including 26 in Houston, marking a major increase in work site enforcement. The initiative is part of a growing push to target employers who hire illegal immigrants, a centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s immigration enforcement strategy.

Three leaders from police departments in national immigration hot spots said Wednesday the federal government should remove the burden of enforcement from local agencies if it wants to fix the immigration system. Chiefs John Timoney of Miami and Art Acevedo of Austin, Texas; and former Chief Art Venegas of Sacramento, Calif., called for an increased federal presence along the border and stricter enforcement of employment laws during a panel discussion organized by America\'s Voice, a group that advocates immigration reform.

Seeking to inject their views into the revived debate over immigration overhaul, several big-city police chiefs urged Congress on Wednesday to draft a new policy that improves public safety by bringing illegal immigrants out of the shadows. The chiefs — updating recommendations made in 2006 by the leaders of more than 50 urban police departments — called for an overhaul that would integrate immigrants into the legal system, possibly with driver’s licenses, and separate the local police from immigration enforcement.

The Obama administration launched investigations of hundreds of businesses around the country Wednesday as part of its strategy to focus immigration enforcement on the employers who hire illegal workers. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has begun notifying businesses of plans to audit their I-9 forms — employment eligibility documents that employers fill out for every worker — the agency told members of Congress in an e-mail Wednesday.