The state of Texas squared off against the U.S. Department of Justice and a coalition of immigrant rights groups in federal court on Thursday over whether a new state border enforcement bill is constitutional.
Kristin Etter, director of policy and legal services at the Texas Immigration Law Council, talks to opponents of Senate Bill 4 outside the federal courthouse in Austin on Thursday.The state of Texas squared off today in federal court against the U.S. Department of Justice and a coalition of immigrant rights groups that argue a sweeping, new state border enforcement bill is unconstitutional.
Boynton told federal Judge David Ezra that those orders, like deportation, fall under the purview of the federal government, not the state. The judge criticized the way the Texas Legislature wrote the law and pushed back, questioning the state on the law’s provision stating that “a court may not abate the prosecution of an offense … on the basis that a federal determination regarding the immigration status of the defendant is pending or will be initiated.”But the state argued migrants have the “option” to return to Mexico. If they don’t choose that option, they’d be prosecuted.
“I haven’t seen and the state of Texas can’t point me to any type of military invasion in Texas,” Ezra said. The “invasion” rhetoric has been especially harmful to the El Paso community following a mass shooting there in 2019. “SB 4 is an unconstitutional attempt to codify xenophobia and perpetuate false narratives of an ‘invasion’ taking place in our borderlands,” he said in a statement. “Our El Paso community was the target of a lone gunman who murdered 23 people and injured 22 others because of this same ‘take back our country’ language.”
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