The entry into force of the toughest anti-immigrant law in the United States has been blocked for the moment.
This Thursday, a federal judge elevated the dispute in court between the Joe Biden Administration and the Texas Government, paralyzing the so-called SB4, a law that allows state security forces to request papers and detain people in order to deport them to Mexico.
Magistrate David Ezra has described the rule as unconstitutional, since it gives local authorities powers that correspond to federal agencies.
The District Court's decision is not the end point to a conflict that will last for months.
“Texas will immediately appeal this decision.
"We will not give up in our fight to protect our State and our nation from President Biden's border crisis," Governor Abbott said in a statement.
The local president signed the law in December at an event held in Brownsville, a border community that will be visited this Thursday by Biden.
SB4 was set to go into effect on Tuesday, March 5.
In his decision, argued in 114 pages, Judge Ezra rejects one of the arguments most used by Republicans in Texas to approve the rule, that the entity is being “invaded” by immigrants.
“The surges in immigration do not constitute an invasion as described by the Constitution, nor is Texas initiating military action with the enactment of SB4.
Finally, allowing Texas to supersede federal legislation based on an invasion would mean nullifying federal law and authority, a notion that is antithetical to the Constitution and has been unequivocally rejected by federal courts since the Civil War,” he has considered. .
The magistrate cites on several occasions the case of Arizona, a State in which Republican authorities carried out a similar experiment.
SB1070, enacted in 2010, allowed state agents to detain anyone on suspicion of not having papers.
The case reached the Supreme Court.
The constitutional judges ruled in favor of the federal government, considering that the legal scheme implemented by the Arizona Legislature competed with the laws approved by Congress to regulate immigration.
“SB 4 and SB 1070 contain notable similarities,” Ezra writes.
Governor Abbott believes his law has the same fate as Arizona's.
“Even from his court, this District Judge admits that this case will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court,” says the president.
The politician, one of the most radical in his fight against irregular immigration, trusts that the conservative supermajority cemented in the Court during the Donald Trump era can leave the law in force.
Ezra remembers some of the positions that right-wingers had in the opinion in the case of SB 1070. Antonin Scalia, one of the most important conservative judges, considered that this rule was constitutional because it focused on the detention of people without papers. .
Clarence Thomas, who remains in office, suggested that States do have the power to make these arrests, but not to begin the process of expulsion of immigrants.
“The Executive Branch maintains complete discretion to determine whether these people are finally deported,” indicates the District Magistrate.
The expulsion of people without papers is one of the points that distinguishes Texas law from Arizona law.
The regulations endorsed by Texas Republicans allow police officers to bring detainees before a local judge.
This can launch an expulsion process back to Mexico, regardless of whether the immigrants have that nationality or not.
This point has been insistently rejected by the Mexican authorities.
If this order is not followed, the subjects could receive a potential punishment of up to 20 years in prison.
“Expulsion touches one of the most sensitive foreign affairs considerations in federal policy,” Judge Ezra notes.
The magistrate argues that having allowed the rule to come into force would allow the States and local judges to shape a “vital issue of foreign policy” and to “meddle” in a field of control that corresponds to the Legislature.
Human rights defense organizations have celebrated the District Judge's decision.
“This is a triumph for Texas values, human rights and the Constitution,” considered the state chapter of the ACLU, the Civil Liberties Association.
The group, which went to court in December suing to stop the law, vows to continue its fight regardless of the number of appeals the Abbott Government files.
“We must remain vigilant against Texas' politics of fear and hate,” said Jennifer Babaie, director of legal services at Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center.
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