Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) said Monday that state authorities are “now authorized” to arrest illegal immigrants just moments before President Joe Biden‘s Justice Department petitioned the Supreme Court to undo an appeals court ruling allowing the state’s law criminalizing illegal border crossings.
“Law enforcement officers in Texas are now authorized to arrest & jail any illegal immigrants crossing the border,” Abbott wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, two days after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court’s block on the state’s law criminalizing illegal border crossings.
Justice Samuel Alito on Monday evening responded to the Biden administration’s petition by extending the hold on the Texas law until March 13 at 5 p.m. ET and requested a response from Texas by March 11.
The appeals court issued had a temporary stay on Saturday that would allow Texas’s Senate Bill 4 to take effect on March 9 if the Supreme Court does not intervene, and the Biden administration on Monday afternoon filed an emergency petition to stay the 5th Circuit’s decision by Saturday at midnight.
The Biden administration argued it is likely to succeed on the merits if the high court granted the issue for certiorari, or agreed to hear the case, and contended that lower courts have found the “United States would suffer irreparable harm if SB 4 goes into effect,” according to its Supreme Court petition.
The 5th Circuit’s reversal came just days after U.S. District Court Judge David Alan Ezra blocked SB 4 from going into effect; the measure allows law enforcement to arrest illegal migrants within the Lone Star state. Ezra, a Reagan appointee, said the law “threatens the fundamental notion that the United States must regulate immigration with one voice.”
University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck posted to X on Sunday, saying the appeals court’s decision is “effectively *forcing*” the Supreme Court to rule by Saturday whether to allow Texas’s policy to go into effect.”
Abbott signed SB 4 in December, marking one of several major attempts by the Lone Star State to deter immigrants from crossing the Rio Grande after years of historic numbers of immigrants arriving at the Texas-Mexico border.
The law makes illegally crossing the border a Class B misdemeanor, which can result in a sentence of six months in jail for those convicted. Repeat offenders could face a second-degree felony with a punishment of two to 20 years in prison.
SB 4 also requires state judges to order immigrants returned to Mexico if they are convicted, leaving local law enforcement responsible for transporting immigrants back to the border. A judge could drop the charges if an immigrant agrees to return to Mexico without contesting the process.
The lawsuit against SB 4 stems from the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Texas, along with support from the Texas Civil Rights Project. One month after the groups filed their lawsuit in December, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Texas, which have since been combined.
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Legal proceedings come as both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump visited the border last week in separate bids to promote their plans to handle the migrant crisis, with the pair likely to face off in the November general election.
Trump maintains that he will revert the nation’s immigration policies to how they were before Biden became president and has argued that the Department of Homeland Security under Biden is seeking to incentivize illegal immigration.
The Supreme Court recently also become ensnared in separate litigation stemming from Texas over Abbott’s fight to install razor wire fences along the state’s border. The 5th Circuit was scheduled to hold an en banc oral argument hearing last month over the border wire dispute after the Supreme Court effectively allowed U.S. Border Patrol officials to begin cutting Texas’s wire fences on Jan. 22. That hearing has been postponed pending further developments at the federal district court, according to the 5th Circuit’s docket.
The Biden administration has filed 15 emergency appeals to the Supreme Court this year, with 12 of them stemming from lawsuits at the 5th Circuit.
