Texas Is Permitted To Start Implementing Contentious Immigration Law By The Supreme Court

immigration law
In this July 12, 2019 file photo, men stand in a U.S. Immigration and Border Enforcement detention center in McAllen, Texas, during a visit by Vice President Mike Pence. Immigration lawyers say a pattern has repeated itself for several weeks in migrant detention facilities along the border. Immigrants are being detained in packed cells only to be transferred out within hours once the government is sued on their behalf. (Josh Dawsey/The Washington Post via AP, Pool)

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court permitted Texas to start implementing a contentious immigration law that gives state agents the authority to detain and arrest anybody they believe is entering the US illegally. Three liberal justices of the court disagreed.

A federal appeals court is currently considering legal objections to the statute, but Texas, which has been at odds with the Biden administration over immigration policy, has gained a sizable, however brief, victory from the ruling. Tuesday’s judgment nullified the court’s prior order to halt the proceedings indefinitely to prevent the law from going into force. 

The Federal Government Is Now In Charge Of Immigration Law

Senate Bill 4, which was signed into law by Republican Governor Greg Abbott in December, permits state judges to order the deportation of immigrants and makes it a criminal to enter Texas unlawfully. Generally speaking, the federal government is in charge of immigration law enforcement.

Immigration groups were immediately alarmed by the bill, fearing an increase in racial profiling detentions and attempted deportations by state officials in Texas, a state where forty percent of the population is Latino. The state administration was unable to put the bill into effect because of an Austin federal judge’s ban. However, the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary stay of the ruling made by the lower court and said that the legislation would go into effect on March 10 if the Supreme Court took no action.