Court lifts block on SB4 that lets Texas enforce immigration law

FILE -- Floating border barrier in Rio Grande River

FILE VIDEO – The Department of Justice is threatening to sue Texas over the barrier and Governor Greg Abbott has responded on social media.

AUSTIN, Texas - An appeals court has lifted a block on a state law that allows Texas to enforce immigration law.

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.

A lawsuit filed by El Paso County and some non-profit groups led to an injunction from a lower court that stopped enforcement of the law. Opponenets said immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility.

What's new:

On Friday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 10-7 decision that the parties suing to prevent the law from going into effect lacked standing and lifted the restraining order.

Judges did not rule on whether the law is constitutional.

What they're saying:

While not ruling on the legality of SB4, Judge James Ho said that Texas has the right to respond to "an invasion." That is the same term used by President Donald Trump to describe the situation at the Southern Border in an executive order he signed just after taking office in 2025.

The other side:

Dissenting judges said that the "immigration laws Texas has enacted are preempted by federal law."