ATLANTA—After eight years of operating, Georgia's little known but unpopular state immigration board was dissolved.

In 2011, Georgia created an entity unique to the state: the Immigration Enforcement Review Board (IERB), tasked with investigating citizen complaints about municipalities not enforcing immigration laws.

But the IERB was quietly dissolved with the passing of HB 553, which Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law on May 7. It was made public almost a week later by local news outlet Decaturish, which first reported on the IERB's inclusion in the law. HB 553 focused mostly on other matters, with the two paragraphs dismantling the IERB appearing in the last pages of the act.

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The bill's language came from the House's Code Revision Committee, says state Rep. Teri Anulewicz, a committee member.

"Clearly, it's been documented this was a board that really nobody was ... happy with what it was doing, and it really wasn't doing a whole lot of anything," she says. The Code Revision Committee's purpose "is to look through these different boards, look through these different committees to determine is there a need to even have these codified anymore."

Anulewicz says committee discussions about removing the IERB didn't attract a great deal of public interest.

State Reps. Timothy Barr and Michael Caldwell, the committee's chairman and vice chairman, respectively, didn't respond to requests for comment.

The board, made up of volunteers with little immigration or legal expertise, had the power to recommend sanctions against municipalities that they judged to not be following the law. Members were appointed for two-year terms by the governor, lieutenant governor and speaker of the House.

People with various views on immigration cheered the move to terminate the board.

"This was the right thing to do," says Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization that advocates for limited immigration. "Anytime you have a board with enforcement authority run by people who are political appointees and not being chosen for their expertise or experience, it's a recipe for problems."

Azadeh Shahshahani, legal and advocacy director for Project South, a social justice organization based in Atlanta, says the board's dismantling is a victory.

"I'm really delighted that finally this is happening after so many years of raising concern about this body that was very problematic in so many different respects, from allowing vigilante, anti-immigrant members of the public to file complaints, to having so much power in terms of being able to fine localities and subpoena officials and documents."

Only two residents ever filed complaints to the IERB. D.A. King, an anti-illegal immigration activist, filed the majority. (He said he is happy to hear of the board's demise, according to Decaturish.) The other Georgia resident was then-Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, a Republican running for governor at the time. Cagle accused Decatur, a city just outside of Atlanta, of not cooperating with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. In response, Decatur filed lawsuits challenging the board's compliance with state transparency laws and term limits.

The IERB settled with Decatur in January, paying the city $12,000 in attorney fees and other costs.

Shahshahani thinks this legal fight is why the IERB was annulled now.

"My strong guess is that the state leadership figured out that it was more trouble than it was worth," she says.