In a broad rejection of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s immigration enforcement initiative, a federal judge on Thursday blocked a new Texas law that would have given police broad authority to arrest immigrants suspected of entering the country illegally. This decision handed the Biden administration a victory.
Preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge David Ezra stopped a law that was scheduled to go into effect on March 5 while President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, the presumed Republican opponent in November, were in Texas discussing immigration.
The state attorney general’s office said in a statement on Thursday that they had immediately appealed the decision.
The decision rejected Republican allegations of an ongoing “invasion” along the southern border because of record-high illegal crossings, criticizing Texas’ immigration enforcement efforts on several fronts.
According to Ezra, the law also goes against federal immigration law, the supremacy clause of the Constitution, and it may negatively impact US foreign policy and treaty obligations.
Ezra has blocked Abbott’s border escalation orders twice in the last six months, having previously decided against Texas’s floating barrier in the Rio Grande.
The judge stated that it would “amount to nullification of federal law and authority – a notion that is antithetical to the Constitution and has been unequivocally rejected by federal courts since the Civil War” to permit Texas to “permanently supersede federal directives” as a result of a purported invasion.
The Texas bill’s opponents have referred to it as the most dramatic attempt by a state to control immigration since the “show me your papers” bill, an Arizona law passed in 2010. The Arizona law was partially overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, but some Texas Republicans want the decision to be reexamined.
Ezra concluded in his ruling that the Arizona case’s ruling superseded the Texas law, noting that the two statutes shared “striking similarities.” He also overturned the assertions made by state officials that a significant number of unauthorized border crossings amount to a “invasion,” arguing that such a designation is an unusual reading of the Constitution’s invasion clause and that upholding the law would amount to allowing the state to wage war.
The judge stated that while some may sympathize with Texas officials’ complaints about how the federal government has handled immigration policy, this does not provide a justification for breaking the Constitution.
Abbott claimed that Biden was to blame for the migrant inflow in a statement, adding, “We will not back down in our fight to protect our state – and our nation.”
