The Guardian (USA)

Confusion in Texas after appeals court blocks border arrest law

- Chris Stein in Washington, Joanna Walters in New York and agency

Texas was in a state of confusion early on Wednesday in the hours after another freeze on the controvers­ial new state law that would allow local law enforcemen­t to arrest migrants – the legal jurisdicti­on of the federal government – hours after the US supreme court had allowed it.

There was puzzlement, after the law had been in force for a few hours and was then blocked by an appeals court around midnight, about whether and when state troopers or Texas national guard soldiers – who have the most interactio­n with migrants – would begin enforcemen­t.

A hearing was to take place on Wednesday before a panel of the fifth circuit court of appeals, which issued the most recent ruling in the twisting case of the law known as SB4 late on Tuesday.

The Kinney county sheriff, Brad Coe, who has largely embraced the multibilli­on-dollar border enforcemen­t effort of Texas’s hard-right governor, Greg Abbott, said he was “prepared to proceed with prosecutio­ns” but officers would need “probable cause” to make arrests. His county covers a stretch of border near Del Rio that was recently the busiest corridor for illegal crossings but has quieted considerab­ly.

“It is unlikely that observers will see an overnight change,” Coe said.

The 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 had accidents, we had injuries, we got a little glimpse of what would happen if the state begins to control what happens in respect to immigratio­n,” Samaniego said.

The impact of the battle between state and federal powers over immigratio­n law 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.

The University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck predicted that the appeals court is likely to leave SB4 on hold until the US supreme court weighs in again, posting on X/Twitter that it would remain blocked “indefinite­ly”.

After the latest in a series of contradict­ory court rulings, Lina Hidalgo, the judge of Harris county, centered on Houston, told CNN that “absolutely” there was confusion in the state and that “even legal experts are calling it whiplash”. She is opposed to the law.

“It makes me nervous because the law is focused on whether you are suspected of being an immigrant, it’s so extreme, it allows law enforcemen­t to say, ‘You look brown, you look Hispanic,’ and you can be arrested and then possibly deported,” Hidalgo told the cable news channel on Wednesday morning.

Abbott has claimed there is an “invasion” of Texas by unauthoriz­ed migrants, allowing him to take immigratio­n power into the state’s hands as if it were on some sort of war footing.

Hidalgo said many members of law enforcemen­t she dealt with were not prepared to enforce the law. She told CNN she could imagine a scenario where she herself went for a jog and was stopped by local police saying, “You look like you may be here on an undocument­ed basis,” and said: “This is a terrible precedent.”

An appeals judge just before midnight on Tuesday said that no matter how strongly Texas disagreed with the federal government’s applicatio­n of immigratio­n law at the US-Mexico border, it did not justify the state’s defiance of the US constituti­on.

The new Texas law attempts to take the power from the federal government to say that crossing into Texas from a foreign country is a crime unless a person crosses via a legal port of entry, including by crossing the Rio Grande, the river that divides Texas from Mexico, with hopes of claiming asylum but without an appointmen­t with the US authoritie­s. Anyone appre

hended could be arrested by local or state police and charged with a misdemeano­r in state court or with a felony for a repeat alleged violation.

Migrants could be ordered to return to Mexico – even though the Mexican government quickly said it would not accept non-Mexicans thus expelled.

On Wednesday, the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, sharply criticized the Texas law saying it violates internatio­nal law and is “draconian, dehumanizi­ng and unfair”, and would prompt a diplomatic response from Mexico.

Other Republican-led states far from the border are also already looking to follow Texas’s path. In Iowa, more than a thousand miles from the Mexico border, the state lower house on Tuesday gave final approval to a bill that would also give its state law enforcemen­t agencies the power to arrest people whom they deem to be in the US illegally and have previously been denied entry into the country.

Skylor Hearn, executive director of the Sheriffs’ Associatio­n of Texas, said sheriffs’ offices had been training since last year.

“If a county chooses to take it on themselves, they are choosing for their taxpayers to take it on themselves as well,” Hearn said. “As long as the federal government is willing to do its part that it is supposed to be doing, it is ideal for them to take possession and custody of these people.”

Daniel Morales, an associate professor of law at the University of Houston Law Center, said the Texas law “will be a mess, very clearly, to enforce”.

Arrests for unauthoriz­ed crossings fell by half in January from a record high of 250,000 in December, with sharp declines in Texas.

Tucson, Arizona, has been the busiest corridor in recent months, followed by San Diego in January, but reasons for sudden shifts are often complicate­d and are dictated by smuggling organizati­ons.

 ?? Photograph: Justin Hamel/Reuters ?? A border patrol agent closes a gate in the border wall in El Paso, Texas, on Tuesday, after thesupreme court let SB4 take effect.
Photograph: Justin Hamel/Reuters A border patrol agent closes a gate in the border wall in El Paso, Texas, on Tuesday, after thesupreme court let SB4 take effect.

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