Civil rights groups file lawsuit to stop Texas immigration law

article

EAGLE PASS, TEXAS - MARCH 21: Razor wire is seen atop fencing on the banks of the Rio Grande river near Shelby Park on March 21, 2024 in Eagle Pass, Texas. Hours after the U.S. Supreme Court authorized Senate Bill 4, a federal appeals court halted th

Expand

AUSTIN, Texas - A group of civil rights organizations have filed a lawsuit to stop parts of a Texas law that would make it a state crime to cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.

The move comes after a federal appeals court overturned a lower court ruling that had blocked enforcement of the law.

In Monday's filing, the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Texas and the Texas Civil Rights Project are seeking to block four provisions of the law from going into effect:

• The power given to magistrates to issue deportation orders
• The crime of failing to comply with a magistrates immigration orders
• The requirement that magistrates continue prosecution even if a person has a pending immigration case under federal law.
• The reentry crime that would apply to anyone living in or traveling through Texas who reentered the United States, even if the person had federal permission to reenter or had since obtained lawful immigration status.

The groups argue that the law is unconstitutional because immigration law is exclusively the federal government's domain and should preempt state law.

What they're saying:

"S.B. 4 would transform our police and judges into immigration agents — threatening neighbors who have families here, who have lived here for years, even those who have legal status," said Adriana Piñon, legal director at the ACLU of Texas. "Immigration enforcement is exclusively the federal government's arena, and no state has ever claimed the power Texas threatens to wield here. We are taking this back to court to defend our Texas communities."

What is Senate Bill 4?

The backstory:

Texas Senate Bill 4, passed in 2023 and scheduled to take effect in 2024, made entering Texas from another country anywhere outside of an official border crossing a state crime. It allowed state authorities to arrest people in those cases and allowed state judges to order them to self-deport.

The law is scheduled to go into effect on May 15 unless another court takes action.

What they're saying:

"Every court to have reached the merits of laws like S.B. 4 has found them to be unconstitutional," said Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. "S.B. 4 is cruel and illegal, and we will keep fighting it until it is permanently struck down."

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals did not rule on the law's constitutionality when they lifted the restraining order.