Texas Border Business
Texas Border Business
A federal appeals court has blocked Texas’s Senate Bill 4 (S.B. 4), a law that aimed to give state and local authorities the power to arrest and deport people based on immigration status. In a decision issued late Thursday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s February 2024 injunction, ruling that the law cannot take effect because it violates the U.S. Constitution.
The court reaffirmed that immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility. Quoting Supreme Court precedent, the ruling stated, “For nearly 150 years, the Supreme Court has recognized that the power to control immigration — the entry, admission, and removal of aliens—is exclusively a federal power.” It added that S.B. 4 “robs every administration of the very discretion in alien removal matters that Congress granted to the federal executive and not to the States.”
S.B. 4 was passed in 2023 by Texas lawmakers. It sought to make it a state crime for undocumented individuals to enter Texas from Mexico. It allowed state officers to arrest and deport people based solely on their immigration status. Legal experts and advocates have long argued that the law would result in racial profiling and the separation of families, particularly harming Black and Brown communities.
The State of Texas argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed because the federal government had dropped its own case earlier this year. However, the Fifth Circuit confirmed that private plaintiffs still had the right to sue and ruled that S.B. 4 is unconstitutional.
“This decision extends a long and unbroken string of defeats that the courts have dealt to S.B. 4 and related laws,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stated. Similar laws in other states, including Florida, Idaho, and Oklahoma, have also been blocked by the courts.
Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said, “Courts around the country have repeatedly and emphatically rejected these state immigration laws. These illegal schemes violate 150 years of Supreme Court precedent and are deeply harmful to our communities.”
David Donatti of the ACLU of Texas added, “S.B. 4 is plainly unconstitutional in all its applications, and it does not reflect the values of Texans. We are, and have always been, a border state. Immigrants belong here.”
The lawsuit was filed by the ACLU of Texas, Texas Civil Rights Project, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, American Gateways, and El Paso County. Rochelle Garza, president of the Texas Civil Rights Project, said, “This ruling proves that no state, not even Texas, has the power to create its own immigration laws.”
Local leaders also responded to the ruling. Christina Sanchez, El Paso County Attorney, emphasized that the law would have imposed costly, unconstitutional burdens on local law enforcement. “We remain in this fight for justice and the rights of all individuals in our community,” she said.For now, the court’s ruling keeps S.B. 4 from goin
