Lawsuit challenges Texas efforts to restrict illegal border crossings

By Daniel Wiessner

(Reuters) – Civil rights groups filed a lawsuit on Tuesday challenging a new Republican-backed law in Texas that will give state officials broad powers to arrest, prosecute, and deport people who illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

The lawsuit filed in federal court in Austin, Texas, claims that the law signed by Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Monday unlawfully infringes upon the authority of the federal government under the U.S. Constitution to enforce the nation’s immigration laws.

The groups, led by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), also said the law, which takes effect in March, illegally bars migrants from applying to the U.S. government for asylum or other humanitarian protections.

The law, known as SB4, makes it a state crime to illegally enter or re-enter Texas from a foreign country and gives state and local law enforcement authorities the power to arrest and prosecute violators. It also allows state judges to order that individuals be deported, with up to 20-year prison sentences for migrants who refuse to comply.

The Republican-controlled Texas legislature passed the measure in November.

Adriana Pinon, legal director of the ACLU’s Texas chapter, said the law was one of the most extreme immigration enforcement measures taken by a U.S. state.

“The bill overrides bedrock constitutional principles and flouts federal immigration law while harming Texans, in particular Brown and Black communities,” Pinon said in a statement.

Abbott on Monday said the law was necessary because of the failure of Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration to stem a spike in illegal migration.

Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law at Cornell Law School, said before the lawsuit was filed that the Texas law was vulnerable to legal challenges. Yale-Loehr cited a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said Arizona could not authorize state officials to arrest and prosecute people for being in the United States illegally, because that was the exclusive province of the federal government.

Paxton, a Republican, told state lawmakers during a hearing in March that the 2012 decision “didn’t make a lot of sense” and that passing SB4 could give the Supreme Court’s conservative majority a chance to revisit the ruling.

Texas is already embroiled in a series of court cases related to Abbott’s efforts to deter and punish illegal border crossings, collectively known as Operation Lone Star.

In October, a U.S. appeals court ruled that advocacy groups lacked the legal authority to challenge Abbott’s 2021 executive order that restricted the transport of migrants through the state.

And in November, a federal judge rejected a bid by Texas to block federal immigration authorities from destroying razor wire fencing that the state placed along the border with Mexico to deter illegal border crossings. The next day, an appeals court upheld a judge’s ruling requiring Texas to remove a 1,000-foot-long (305-meter) floating barrier it placed in the Rio Grande.

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