Texas law allowing arrest of migrants in legal limbo
New program helps connect US trails as nationwide network
By Valerie Gonzalez and Lindsay Whitehurst
McALLEN, Texas — A dizzying volley of courtroom maneuvers over a Texas law that would allow the state to arrest and deport people who enter the U.S. illegally sowed confusion at the nation’s border with Mexico on Wednesday as sheriffs, police chiefs and migrants waited for direction.
Texas faced skeptical questioning during a hearing before a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that ended without a ruling, leaving Texas’ new law on hold for now. It was part of a flurry of activity that included a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court that allowed the law to take effect for several hours Tuesday.
During Wednesday’s hearing, 5th Circuit Chief Judge Priscilla Richman questioned how the state law would be carried out, including how Texas would respond if federal authorities don’t cooperate with a state judge’s order to deport someone.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has said it would not have deportation authority under the state law.
“This is uncharted because we don’t have any cases on it,” said Texas Solicitor General Aaron Nielson.
The Justice Department has argued that Texas’ law is a violation of federal authority and will create chaos at the border. Lawyers for the department faced a grilling from Judge Andrew Oldham, who was appointed by Republican President Donald Trump. The third judge on the panel, Judge Irma Ramirez, did not ask questions during the hearing but has previously voted to keep the law on hold.
Richman challenged Texas’ assertion that it is exercising a “core police power,” getting Nielsen to acknowledge that deporting people has been a federal responsibility. But Nielsen denied that Texas is “trying to take over the field” on border enforcement and said the state wants to cooperate with the federal government on what is widely acknowledged to be a crisis.
Nielsen also said he did not know how the law would affect someone who entered the country illegally but came to Texas from another state.
Regardless of how this three-judge panel rules, the legal fight will hardly be over. The 5th Circuit has been considering the state’s appeal of a scathing injunction from a lower court judge that put the law on hold.
The 5th Circuit issued a decision earlier this month that would have allowed the law to take effect, and the Supreme Court essentially declined to intervene Tuesday. But hours after the law took effect, the 5th Circuit reinstated the lower court injunction, pausing the law again.
The Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of the law. It instead kicked back to the lower appeals court a challenge led by the DOJ.
Under the Texas law, once defendants are in custody on illegal entry charges, they can agree to a judge’s order to leave the U.S. or face prosecution. However, Mexico has said it would refuse to take anyone back who is ordered to cross the border.
The impact extends far beyond the Texas border.
Republican legislators wrote the law so that it applies in all of the state’s 254 counties, although Steve McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, has said he expects it will mostly be enforced near the border.
Other GOP-led states are already looking to follow Texas’ path.
In Iowa, the state House gave final approval Tuesday to a bill that would also give its state law enforcement the power to arrest people who are in the U.S. illegally and have previously been denied entry into the country. It goes to Republican Gov. Kim
Reynolds. If signed, it would take effect in July.
“The federal government has abdicated its responsibilities and states can and must act,” Iowa state Rep. Steven Holt said.
In Texas, El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego, the top county executive, said immigration enforcement should remain a federal, not state, responsibility, echoing the Biden administration’s view. He said heightened law enforcement presence in the city of El Paso during a previous migrant surge brought high-speed chases and traffic stops based on assumptions that passengers were in the country illegally.
“We got a little glimpse of what would happen if the state begins to control what happens in respect to immigration,” Samaniego said.
Arrests for illegal crossings fell by half in January from a record 250,000 in December, with sharp declines in Texas. Arrests in the Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector, the focus of Abbott’s enforcement, fell 76% from December.
Tucson, Arizona, has been the busiest corridor in recent months, followed by San Diego in January, but reasons for shifts are often dictated by smuggling groups.
By Jeff McMurray
When Mike O’Neil opened his bicycle repair shop in Muncie, Indiana, the Cardinal Greenway trail just outside its window stretched only 2 miles south of the shop.
Today it extends 33 miles beyond that, but the ultimate vision is far grander.
O’Neil hopes the trail born from eastern Indiana’s old railroad tracks will eventually become a central cog in the proposed Great American Rail-Trail — a continuous network of walking and biking routes spanning from Washington state to Washington, D.C.
“As the trail gets longer, more and more people use it,” said O’Neil, who has completed five coast-tocoast bike trips and usually comps the repair costs for out-of-state cyclists visiting his Greenway 500 Bike Shop, which he has owned for nearly two decades. “It would be a wonderful blessing to have it all connected.”
The Biden administration was set to open applications this week for a new grant program that for the first time prioritizes not just building trails but connecting the existing ones. The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law allowed for as much as $1 billion over five years for the program, but Congress has authorized less than $45 million so far.
Still, trail activists say the commitment is almost as important as the dollar figure.
“The number is not as big as we want it to be, but the fact it’s happening is huge,” said Brandi Horton from the Rails to Trails Conservancy. “The administration is understanding in a way we’ve never seen before the role that active transportation has in helping people get around the places where they live.”
Federal Highway Administrator Shailen Bhatt said active transportation options provide health benefits and are as important as electric vehicles in limiting greenhouse gas emissions. He recalled biking along trails on the East Coast when he was Delaware’s transportation director and seeing some of the unsafe gaps in the system.
“Unless we have these networks fully developed, many people won’t be able to take advantage of it,” Bhatt said.
Officials are expecting a highly competitive grant process, including applications from many of the communities along the planned route of the 3,700mile Great American RailTrail. While the ambitious project currently includes more than 125 completed trails across 12 states and the nation’s capital, significant gaps remain — particularly in rural Western states such as Montana and Wyoming.
Michael Kusiek, executive director of the active transportation advocacy group Wyoming Pathways, said reliable trails are especially important for states with rugged terrain. Cyclists and backpackers will often skip routes that aren’t certified as safe, he said.
Although state and local governments in rural areas might not prioritize trails the way larger population centers do, Kusiek said the national effort has spurred competition.
“I think we’d like to not be the last ones showing up to cross the finish line,” Kusiek said.
Wyoming’s northern neighbor, Montana, was awarded a $24 million federal grant last week to extend a recreational trail that had been cut off by a highway and overpass.
Another Montana segment of the Great American Rail-Trail passes the 50,000 Silver Dollar Inn in Haugan. Brooke Lincoln, who owns the motel and other businesses nearby, said linking the trails to a national network could be a huge benefit to numerous small towns.
“We’re very depressed,” Lincoln said. “We have very little private property. Our timber industry is basically gone, so our economy is becoming more and more recreation-based. The more diverse that base is, the better it’s going to be.”
Amanda Cooley, one of the leaders of an initiative to close western Montana’s trail gaps, said residents often don’t understand the importance of such projects until they’re complete.
“When you go to a place like Deer Lodge, Montana, people still wave at you at the stoplight,” Cooley said. “The pace of life is just a little slower. When you’re a pedestrian or on a bike, it allows you to experience more. It allows you to take more in instead of just flying by.”
Railroad tracks established most of the key arteries for the Great American Rail-Trail, but many of the proposed connectors present unique challenges. For example, Ohio and West Virginia have made progress toward completing their trail networks, but the Ohio River separating them is a potentially costly obstacle.
A stand-alone recreational bridge connecting Steubenville, Ohio, and East Steubenville, West Virginia, could cost upward of $35 million, said Mike Paprocki, executive director of the BHJ Metropolitan Planning Commission, which has studied the project.
Officials instead are seeking federal funding for a $160 million multimodal bridge for motorized vehicle traffic, with a separate segment for pedestrians and cyclists alongside it.
“Without the infrastructure bill, we wouldn’t be having these conversations,” Paprocki said. “We’d be fighting tooth and nail to get money and would probably be left off the food trough.”
Some of the efforts to expand trails over former railroad tracks have also been complicated due to legal action. Lindsay Brinton, an attorney for St. Louisbased Lewis Rice, said trails can devalue property and she’s trying to make sure the landowners she represents are justly compensated under the laws that protect their rights.
“I have lots of clients who live in rural Indiana who say, ‘We don’t want a trail here,’ ” Brinton said. “But that can’t even be factored into the analysis. Nobody cares what the landowners want.”
Indiana’s Cardinal Greenway trail stretches 62 miles between Marion and Richmond with a several-mile gap in the middle. In many ways, it represents both the future of active transportation and its roots in rail travel. In fact, the nonprofit organization that manages the trail operates out of a former train depot.
O’Neil, 57, remains optimistic that eventually the trail passing by his bike shop and stopping just short of the Ohio border will carry cyclists into that state and then all the way to the East Coast. How quickly that will happen, however, is dependent on finding much larger pots of money to fill the gaps.
“We’re oh so close,” he said.