The Court of Appeals halts Texas SB4 immigration law

A federal appeals court has put a hold on Texas’s controversial immigration law. It is one of the strictest laws of its kind that a US state has passed in recent years.

IN SHORT

Texas’ New SB4 Immigration Law Blocked Again

• A federal appeals court has halted a state law allowing Texas police to arrest individuals suspected of illegally crossing the Texas-Mexico border.
• The law, SB 4, aims to make illegal crossing the border a Class B misdemeanor with a punishment of up to six months in jail. Repeat offenders could face a second-degree felony with a punishment of two to 20 years in prison.
• The Supreme Court allowed SB 4 to go into effect but did not rule on its constitutionality, which has been challenged by the Biden administration.
• The law also requires state judges to order migrants returned to Mexico if they are convicted; local law enforcement would be responsible for transporting migrants to the border.
• The Biden administration and immigrant rights organizations have sued Texas, claiming SB 4 is unconstitutional because it interferes with federal immigration laws.
• The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas, and the Texas Civil Rights Project sued Texas on behalf of El Paso County and two immigrant rights organizations.
• The U.S. Department of Justice filed its lawsuit against Texas, and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the National Immigration Law Center also filed a lawsuit on behalf of La Union del Pueblo Entero.

Texas’ SB4 Immigration Law

Even though the U.S. Supreme Court had just let Senate Bill 4 go into force, a federal appeals court upheld an earlier order that stopped it. SB 4 lets police in Texas arrest people they think are crossing the line between Texas and Mexico without permission.

A federal appeals court stopped a state law late Tuesday night that let Texas police arrest people they thought were crossing the border between Texas and Mexico illegally. This happened hours after the U.S. Supreme Court had said the law could go into effect. The high court had earlier that day sent the case back to the appeals court and asked it to make a decision quickly.

This meant that the law could go into force. The appeals court quickly set a date for a hearing for Wednesday morning. A filing says that the appeals court told a lower court to keep its earlier order to stop Senate Bill 4 in place the night before hearing the cases. The Supreme Court let SB 4 go into effect early Tuesday, but didn’t rule on whether or not the law is valid, which is something the Biden administration has been challenging.

In SB 4, crossing the border without permission would be a Class B crime, which could lead to up to six months in jail. Repeat offenders could face charges of a second-degree felony and face a prison sentence of two to twenty years.

Professor Steve Vladeck

Steve Vladeck, a University of Texas at Austin law professor, said the back-and-forth is “indefensibly chaotic.”
Even if that means SB 4 remains paused indefinitely, hopefully everyone can agree that this kind of judicial whiplash is bad for everyone,” he said.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre

Department of Homeland Security

According to the Department of Homeland Security, the federal government will keep up its legal battle to the bill, which it claims will make the work of its “already strained” workforce “further complicated.” The agency will not enforce the Senate Bill 4 (SB4) law in any way.

Some officials in Mexico quickly condemned the high court’s decision. Texas Republicans saw it as a win, even if it was only temporary, and immigrant rights activists were worried. The intermediate court’s order came out on Tuesday, which was the latest event in a crazy 24 hours since the Supreme Court temporarily blocked SB 4 and then changed its mind on Tuesday.

Immigration rights groups and the Biden administration have sued Texas, saying that SB 4 is unconstitutional because it interferes with federal immigration rules. Federal courts have said that this is the federal government’s job.
In the past, the federal government has made rules and laws about immigration, even though the US Constitution doesn’t give it those powers directly.The central government is also in charge of making deals and treaties with other countries.

Republicans often criticize how Democratic President Biden handles the border between the US and Mexico. Polls show that this is a major issue for voters before the November election for the White House.
In December, the bill SB4 became law. Court challenges delayed its expected implementation on March 5.

There was a hearing in Austin in February where U.S. District Judge David Ezra said SB 4 “threatens the fundamental notion that the United States must regulate immigration with one voice.” The office of Attorney General Ken Paxton quickly took the case to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which overturned Ezra’s decision.

The Biden administration then went to the Supreme Court with its case. The Court temporarily stopped the law until March 18 while it looked into the government’s request to stop the law from going into effect.

Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center

The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas, and the Texas Civil Rights Project sued Texas in December over the new state law. They did this on behalf of El Paso County and two immigrant rights groups, the Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in El Paso and American Gateways in Austin.

They sued Texas the following month through the U.S. Department of Justice. Since then, they have merged the cases. The National Immigration Law Center and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund also filed a lawsuit last week on behalf of La Union del Pueblo Entero. César Chávez and Dolores Huerta, two farmer rights campaigners, founded La Union del Pueblo Entero, an advocacy group in the Rio Grande Valley.

In February, Gallup polled Americans and found that almost one-third of them thought immigration was the biggest problem the country had, bigger than the government, the economy, and inflation.
In December, there were a record number of arrests for illegal crossings along the southern border. In January, that number dropped by half, likely because of the changing seasons and stricter enforcement. The US government has not yet released the data.