In a renewed effort to control the recent surge in illegal border crossings, Texas Governor Greg Abbot has passed a new law that would allow police officers to arrest any migrants who illegally cross into the state from the southern border. The new law would also allow local judges to order the detained migrants to leave the country. The law is set to take effect in March.
Senate Bill 4 was passed just days before Christmas, and President Biden and Mexico's president quickly voiced their opposition to the new measure. In less than 24 hours after Abbot signed the bill, the new law was met with a lawsuit brought forward by Texas’ largest border county and two civil rights groups.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Austin and was brought by El Paso County, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Texas Civil Rights Project. The lawsuit names the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, as their troopers would be the ones conducting the arrests, along with the El Paso County district attorney, Bill Hicks.
Anand Balakrishnan, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, maintains, “Governor Abbott’s efforts to circumvent the federal immigration system and deny people the right to due process is not only unconstitutional, but also dangerously prone to error, and will disproportionately harm Black and Brown people regardless of their immigration status.” Balakrishnan adds, “We’re using every tool at our disposal, including litigation, to stop this egregious law from going into effect.”
Since the start of the pandemic, the southern border has seen an unprecedented rise in the number of migrants illegally crossing over the border. There has been an increase in traffic in more rural and remote areas of the border causing increased strain on the state. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol acting commissioner Troy Miller shares that current metrics are “unprecedented” and that throughout December, there were days when up to 10,000 migrants crossed into the country illegally.
Border states such as Texas have resorted to extreme measures to deal with the influx, including busing and flying migrants to Democrat-led cities like Chicago, New York, and Washington D.C.
Republican state Rep. David Spiller, a co-sponsor of the bill, maintains that the state has the right to protect itself from the spate of illegal crossings. During an interview after the law was passed, Spiller shared that arrests would only occur within a 50-mile radius of the border and that “Texas and other states have the absolute right to enforce their borders.” Spiller adds, “SB 4 is the Texas solution to a Texas problem. It is a humane, logical, and efficient approach to a problem created and fostered by the Biden administration’s continued failure and refusal to secure our border.”
The lawsuit says that the new law is unconstitutional because matters of immigration fall solely under federal jurisdiction. The lawsuit aims to block the enforcement of the new law and have it declared unlawful.
The lawsuit explains, “S.B. 4 creates a new state system to regulate immigration that completely bypasses and conflicts with the federal system.”
Governor Abbot has pushed back against the lawsuit, saying that the state has the right to protect its borders and that he is willing to take the case to the Supreme Court. Abbot maintains that the White House is not doing enough to address illegal immigration and adds in an email statement, “In his absence, Texas has the constitutional authority to secure our border through historic laws like SB 4.”
