A ruling by a federal appeals court will now allow the Texas immigration law permitting local law enforcement officers to arrest illegal migrants to finally go into effect this week after a federal judge issued a block on it after it was passed into law last December.
According to a report from the Daily Wire, Senate Bill 4 passed the state legislature and landed on Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R-Texas) desk, where he immediately signed it. Judge David Alan Ezra blocked the legislation from taking effect last week. His ruling said that states “may not exercise immigration enforcement power except as authorized by the federal government.”
The report also said:
The appeals court’s stay on Ezra’s order, which came down over the weekend, means the law can now go into effect on March 9 unless the Supreme Court intervenes in the case and keeps it on hold, CNN reported.
SB 4 allows law enforcement officers to arrest and jail illegal immigrants and also grants state judges the power to order deportations. The law drew harsh criticism from the Biden administration, which argued that the state law interfered with federal immigration law.
The Texas law was initially scheduled to go into effect on Tuesday, March 5, but the appeals court put a hold on its ruling for seven days to allow time for the Biden administration to take the case to the Supreme Court.
Liberals are doing their best to keep the border from being properly secured, hoping that they can allow just enough migrants to cross to gain an advantage at the polls and in the number of representatives certain states have by ballooning their population. What is maddening is the left’s lack of concern for how such a strategy impacts regular Americans.
Think about the case of Laken Riley, a young Georgia nursing student who was murdered by an illegal immigrant who had been caught twice but was never sent back to his country of origin. And Riley is not the first or last victim of violent crime carried out by illegal migrants who entered the country on Biden’s watch.
“Law enforcement officers in Texas are now authorized to arrest & jail any illegal immigrants crossing the border,” Abbott said on Monday. “Obviously this is the case unless the Supreme Court intervenes by March 9.”
Abbott had previously vowed that his administration would fight to enforce the law all the way up to the Supreme Court. He said the law was necessary because of President Biden’s lax border policies, adding that “Texas has the constitutional authority to secure our border through historic laws like SB 4.”
Shortly after Abbott signed SB 4 into law, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against Texas, arguing that the law was discriminatory and would target minorities, and a month later, the U.S. Department of Justice sued the state. The Biden administration’s and ACLU’s lawsuits have since been combined. Opponents of the law argue that it violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution which prohibits states from interfering with the federal government using its Constitutional powers.
In Ezra’s ruling blocking the law from going into effect, the judge disagreed with the attorney for Texas, who argued that the law was necessary to curb the massive influx of illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico into the state, saying the crisis constitutes an invasion. Ezra said he did not see that Texas was under any sort of “military invasion.”
“I haven’t seen, and the state of Texas can’t point me to any type of military invasion in Texas,” Ezra went on to say. “I don’t see evidence that Texas is at war.”
Millions of illegal immigrants have entered the country since Biden took office. He has done nothing to end the influx. It’s a simple solution: build the wall and enforce the law. Create a barrier that keeps people from getting into the country and send home those who try to slip through. Don’t reward bad behavior.