2024-03-19 22:52:36
The United States Supreme Court cleared the way this Tuesday for Texas to immediately begin implementing the controversial immigration law that allows state authorities to arrest and detain people suspected of having entered the country illegally.
The three progressive judges of the high court expressed their dissent with the ruling.
Challenges to the law are currently underway in a federal appeals court, but the decision represents a significant, if temporary, victory for Texas, which has waged an ongoing battle with the Biden administration over immigration policy.
The decision comes less than 24 hours following the court indefinitely suspended implementation of the law. This was the third time that the high court stopped the measure.
The controversial law, known as SB4, was signed into law by Texas Governor Greg Abbott last December.
This measure criminalizes illegal entry into Texas by considering it a state crime, and allows state judges to order the deportation of migrants. The implementation of immigration laws, in general, is a function that is the responsibility of the federal government.
Upon its enactment, the law immediately raised concerns among immigration advocates and activists regarding the potential for increased racial profiling, as well as arrests and attempted deportations by state authorities in Texas, where Latinos make up 40% of the population. population.
A federal judge in Austin had blocked the state government from implementing the law.
But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit granted a temporary stay of the lower court’s decision and said the law would take effect on March 10 if the Supreme Court did not take action.
A pair of emergency calls from the Biden administration and others soon followed.
Abbott on Tuesday called the court’s decision a “positive development,” but acknowledged that the case will continue in the appeals court.
As is often the case in decisions on emergency applications, the Supreme Court did not explain its reasoning.
However, a concurring opinion written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, explained that the appeals court had only issued a temporary “administrative” order.
“To my knowledge, this court has never reviewed an appeals court’s decision to issue – or not to issue – an administrative stay,” Barrett wrote.
“I wouldn’t get into that. “When introduced, an administrative suspension is supposed to be a short-lived prelude to the main event: a ruling on the suspension motion pending appeal,” she added.
Barrett also noted that she believed it was “unwise to invite emergency litigation in this court over whether an appeals court abused its discretion in this preliminary step.”
Progressive Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the order “invites more chaos and crisis in immigration law enforcement.”
The law, Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, “upends the federal-state balance of power that has existed for more than a century, in which the National Government has had exclusive authority over the entry and expulsion of noncitizens.”
“Texas can now immediately implement its own law that imposes criminal liability on thousands of noncitizens and requires their removal to Mexico,” Sotomayor wrote.
“This law will disrupt delicate foreign relations, thwart the protection of people fleeing persecution, hamper federal law enforcement efforts, undermine the ability of federal agencies to detect and monitor imminent security threats, and deter non-citizens to report abuse or trafficking.”
For her part, Justice Elena Kagan noted in her brief dissent that her view of the issues in the case “are, as always in this position, preliminary.”
“But the issue of immigration in general, and the entry and expulsion of noncitizens specifically, are matters that have long been considered the special purview of the Federal Government,” Kagan continued.
The New Orleans-based appeals court will hear arguments in the case on April 3.
Back to the Supreme Court
Barrett and Kavanaugh, two critical votes on the Supreme Court, wrote that justices should stay out of the second-guessing of appeals courts when it comes to very short-term “administrative” breaks that are typically used to provide cuts a few extra days to review cases.
Barrett wrote that if the Fifth Circuit does not issue a decision soon, the Biden administration and the other parties in the case might return to the Supreme Court.
“There may come a time, in this case or another, when this court will be forced to conclude that an administrative suspension has effectively become a suspension pending appeal and review it accordingly,” he wrote. “But at this point in this case, that conclusion would be premature.”
Tami Goodlette, an attorney representing some of the parties challenging the law, called the court’s order “unfortunate” and said it “unnecessarily puts people’s lives at risk.”
“We remain committed to the fight to permanently repeal SB4 to show the nation that no state has the power to override federal immigration authority,” he said.
The battle over a controversial law
The Biden administration, two immigration advocacy groups and El Paso County are challenging the law.
In their appeal to the Supreme Court, government lawyers argued that the law would “profoundly” alter the status quo “that has existed between the United States and the states in the context of immigration for nearly 150 years.”
“People may not agree with immigration. They never have been. And Texas may be deeply concerned regarding recent immigration,” attorneys for a pair of immigration groups and El Paso County wrote in court papers.
“But the same thing happened in California in the 1870s, Pennsylvania and Michigan in the 1930s, and Arizona in 2012. Yet for 150 years this court has made clear that states cannot regulate the core field of immigration. , entry and expulsion,” they added.
For their part, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, and other officials told the Supreme Court that “the Constitution recognizes that Texas has the sovereign right to defend itself from the violent transnational cartels that flood the state with fentanyl, weapons and all kinds of brutality.”
Officials described Texas as “the country’s first line of defense once morest transnational violence” and said the state has been “forced to grapple with the deadly consequences of the federal government’s inability or unwillingness to secure the border.”
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