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21-03-2024
WASHINGTON/ HOUSTON: The Supreme Court has allowed Texas to enforce one of the toughest immigration laws enacted by any US state in recent memory.
The measure allows police to arrest and prosecute those suspected of illegally crossing the US-Mexican border.
The Biden administration has challenged the law, calling it unconstitutional.
Crossing the US border illegally is already a federal crime, but violations are usually handled as civil cases by the immigration court system.
One reason the Texas law, SB4, is so controversial is because courts have previously ruled that only the federal government can enforce the country’s immigration laws, not individual US states.
SB4 gives local and state police officers the ability to stop and arrest anyone suspected of having crossed the border illegally, except in schools, healthcare facilities and places of worship.
Punishments would range from misdemeanors to felonies and potential imprisonment, or fines of up to $2,000 (£1,570).
Penalties for those who illegally re-enter Texas after having been deported could go up to 20 years in prison, depending on a person’s immigration and criminal history.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court said the measure can take effect while a lower federal appeals court weighs its legality. A day earlier the nation’s highest court placed a temporary pause on SB4.
President Joe Biden’s White House sharply criticized the latest decision.
“SB4 will not only make communities in Texas less safe, it will also burden law enforcement, and sow chaos and confusion at our southern border,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement but Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton hailed the Supreme Court decision as a “huge win” against the Biden administration and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has also challenged the law in court.
“As always, it’s my honor to defend Texas and its sovereignty, and to lead us to victory in court,” he wrote in a post on X, formerly twitter.
The ACLU vowed that it “won’t back down until this extreme anti-immigrant law is struck down for good”.
Top Mexico diplomat Roberto Velasco Alvarez posted on X that Mexico will not accept migrants being sent back across the border by the state of Texas.
“The dialogue on immigration matters will continue between the federal governments” of Mexico and the US, he wrote in Spanish.
The court’s three liberal justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson disagreed with the majority ruling. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
