Judge blocks Texas law giving state a role in deporting migrants
AUSTIN — Ruling against Texas efforts to take control of immigration enforcement, a federal judge on Thursday blocked a state law that would have empowered local law officers to arrest and state judges to deport migrants along the southern border.
Lawyers for Texas argued the law, signed by Gov. Greg Abbott in December and set to take effect March 5, was a valid response to an “invasion” of unauthorized migrants and criminal cartels.
U.S. District Judge David Ezra disagreed, ruling that the law known as Senate Bill 4 violated the U.S. Constitution and prior Supreme Court rulings that put the federal government in charge of enforcing immigration laws and restrictions.
Ezra also rejected Texas arguments that surging immigration constituted an invasion within the meaning of the Constitution, noting that Texas was not “engaging
in war by enforcing SB 4.”
“To allow Texas to permanently supersede federal directives on the basis of an invasion would amount to nullification of federal law and authority — a notion that is antithetical to the Constitution and has been unequivocally rejected by federal courts since the Civil War,” Ezra wrote in his order.
The Texas Legislature passed SB 4 in November during the year’s fourth special session.
Republicans praised the legislation, passed largely along party lines, as a necessary response to the Biden administration’s lax immigration policies, while Democrats argued that immigration enforcement belonged to the federal government, not the states.
Texas is certain to appeal Ezra’s ruling to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, becoming the third immigration-related case involving Texas awaiting a ruling by the New Orleansbased court.
Arguing that the Texas law exceeded state authority, the U.S. Justice Department relied heavily on a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned a similar law in Arizona. The 5-3 ruling said states could not pass laws that “undermine federal law.”
Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton have called on the high court to reconsider that ruling, hoping that the current 6-3 conservative majority would be willing to expand state latitude on immigration enforcement.
Texas, in court filings, argued that the law did not conflict with federal immigration statutes and that the U.S. Constitution gave Abbott and the Texas Legislature the right to protect the state from a migrant “invasion.”
SB 4 empowered state and local police to arrest migrants they believe were in the state illegally. It also allowed state judges to order migrants to be deported.