Lawsuit challenges Texas efforts to restrict illegal border crossings By Reuters

By Daniel Wiessner

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

The lawsuit filed in federal court in Austin, Texas, claims the law signed Monday by Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott illegally infringes on the federal government’s power under the U.S. Constitution to enforce state laws on immigration.

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

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 offenders. It also allows state judges to order the deportation of individuals, with penalties of up to 20 years in prison 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 actions taken by a U.S. state.

“The bill overrides core constitutional principles and flouts federal immigration law while harming Texans, particularly brown and black communities,” Pinon said in a statement.

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

Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration law professor at Cornell Law School, said before the lawsuit was filed that the Texas law was vulnerable to legal challenges. Yale-Loehr cited a 2012 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that found Arizona could not allow state officials to arrest and prosecute people who were in the United States illegally because it was the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal government.

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

Texas is already embroiled in a series of lawsuits 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 legal authority to challenge Abbott’s 2021 executive order that limited the transportation of migrants across the state.

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