The American Civil Liberties is suing Texas over a new law that gives state officials the ability to arrest and deport illegal immigrants amid a flood of illegal crossings into the state.
The leftist legal group claims that the law is discriminatory and will target minorities, while proponents of the law say that it is necessary since the Biden administration has not secured the border with Mexico. El Paso County, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Texas Civil Rights Project filed the lawsuit in federal court on Tuesday against the Texas Department of Public Safety.
“The bill [SB 4] overrides bedrock constitutional principles and flouts federal immigration law while harming Texans, in particular Brown and Black communities,” said Adriana Piñon, the legal director of the ACLU of Texas.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott said that the state would fight to enforce the law all the way up to the Supreme Court. He also said that the law was necessary because of President Joe Biden’s border policies. “In his absence, Texas has the constitutional authority to secure our border through historic laws like SB 4,” Abbott said.
Texas House Republican David Spiller said that states should have the ability to defend their borders. “I believe that Texas and other states have the absolute right to enforce their borders,” he said.
The law, which will authorize local police to handle immigration enforcement by making it a state misdemeanor to cross the Texas-Mexico border illegally, was first sent to Abbott by Texas Republicans in November. The law will allow Texas to deport those who cross into the state back to Mexico, which would be a direct challenge to the catch-and-release policy currently practiced by the Biden administration.
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According to the governor’s office, the law will create “a criminal offense for illegal entry into this state from a foreign nation. The law cracks down on repeated attempts to enter Texas by creating the offense of illegal reentry and penalizes offenders with up to 20 years in prison. It also provides the mechanism to order an offender to return to the foreign nation from which the person entered or attempted to enter this state. The law provides civil immunity and indemnification for local and state government officials, employees, and contractors for lawsuits resulting from the enforcement of these provisions.”
The law was criticized by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the Biden administration, with Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claiming the law was “not who we are as a country.”
Abbott and Biden have frequently clashed over illegal immigration with Biden’s Justice Department suing Texas over water barriers put up on the Rio Grande to deter illegal immigration.