State law on migrants blocked
Legislation conflicts with Constitution, federal judge rules
WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Thursday blocked a state law set to take effect in just days that would give Texas authorities the power to arrest and deport migrants seeking asylum in the United States.
Attorney General Ken Paxton immediately appealed the decision to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which could step in before the law’s scheduled Tuesday rollout.
U.S. Judge David A. Ezra wrote that provisions in the law allowing the state to remove migrants are “patently unconstitutional.” Immigration enforcement is left to the federal government and the law “conflicts with key provisions of federal immigration law, to the detriment of the United States’ foreign relations and treaty obligations,” he wrote.
Ezra also wrote that record border crossings do not amount to an “invasion” — squarely rejecting what has become the core argument Texas Republican leaders, including Gov. Greg Abbott, have asserted in pushing the state’s escalating border enforcement efforts.
“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.
Ezra added later that, “to discuss ‘invasion’ at length is to take the argument more seriously than it deserves.”
Paxton said in a statement that “Texas has a clear right to defend itself from the drug smugglers, human traffickers, cartels, and legions of illegal aliens crossing into our State as
a consequence of the Biden Administration’s deliberate policy choices.”
Abbott said he would “not back down in our fight to protect our state — and our nation — from President Biden’s border crisis.”
“Even from the bench, this District Judge acknowledged that this case will ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court,” Abbott said.
The ruling comes as President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump traveled to the Texas border Thursday for split-screen appearances, underscoring how central immigration has become in their expected rematch this November. Biden is heading to Brownsville to meet with Border Patrol agents and slam Republicans for blocking a bipartisan proposal aimed at curbing crossings. Trump is set to appear in Eagle Pass, where Texas and the Biden administration have been at odds over the state’s growing border crackdown. Abbott is expected to appear with Trump.
The law, passed last fall by the Gop-led Legislature, would make it a crime to enter the state from Mexico without permission. It would allow any law enforcement officer in Texas to arrest migrants they suspect of entering illegally and empower judges to order their removal. The U.S. Department of Justice and civil and immigrant rights groups sued soon after Abbott signed it into law late last year.
The state’s Republican leaders, including Abbott, have made clear they see the new law as an invitation for the Supreme Court to revisit longstanding legal precedent that leaves enforcement to the federal government. They say the federal government is not doing enough to stop border crossings and the state is within its rights to take matters into its own hands.
“It’s going to the Supreme Court at some point,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said in a recent interview on Fox News. “We as a state can take control of our own border, just like the federal government, because we’re being invaded, they’re not doing their job, we’re spending billions of dollars of our taxpayer money to do what Biden should be doing. And if the Supreme Court will uphold our bill, Texas will take control of the border.”
But Ezra, who was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan, wrote that “over a century of Supreme Court cases” have held that immigration enforcement is left solely to the federal government. Congress writes immigration laws, which the state measure would flout, he wrote, and SB 4 conflicts with foreign relations left to the federal government.
Ezra also rejected the state’s argument that the Biden administration has “abandoned” immigration enforcement, pointing to the Department of Homeland Security’s removal of more than 400,000 migrants from last May through November, as well as a docket of more than 6.8 million cases before Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including noncitizens in removal proceedings, and more than 19,000 detention beds in Texas alone.
“Contrary to Texas’s position, the record is replete with examples and evidence of the federal government carrying out its immigration duties,” he wrote.
Much of Ezra’s ruling was devoted to the state’s argument that an “invasion” of migrants, fentanyl or Mexican cartels gives Texas the right to take action.
“Even accepting that some small number immigrants do traffic drugs or have cartel affiliations,” he wrote, “Texas cannot genuinely maintain that noncitizens crossing the border are an organized military force aimed at conquest or plunder.”