Immigration

Liz Wolfe | 3.19.2024 9:31 AM

Blocked: Last year, Texas Senate Bill (S.B.) 4—which would've allowed Texas police to arrest those who illegally cross the southern border—passed. Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order that blocks the enforcement of the law "until justices decide whether Texas should be allowed to enforce it before federal court challenges are resolved," reports The Texas Tribune. "Justice Samuel Alito did not put a deadline on the temporary order blocking the law and did not indicate when the high court would decide whether to keep the law from being enforced during ongoing litigation."

S.B. 4 "allows police to question and arrest anyone they believe entered Texas through Mexico illegally and is currently without legal immigration status," per the Tribune. It was not intended to be a means by which law enforcement can go after longtime residents of the U.S. who once crossed illegally (and statutes of limitations further protect such people), but rather a means of detaining recent border-crossers.

The bill says "any migrant seen by the police wading across the Rio Grande could be arrested and charged in state court with a misdemeanor on the first offense," per The New York Times. "A second offense would be a felony. After being arrested, migrants could be ordered during the court process to return to Mexico or face prosecution if they did not agree to go."

No path forward: Since the federal government has immigration-enforcement authority, there is plenty of reason to believe the Texas law will ultimately get struck down. The state, meanwhile, says the law has a necessary deterrent effect.

"No matter how emphatic Texas' criticism of the federal government's handling of immigration on the border may be to some," wrote U.S. District Judge David A. Ezra when ruling on the case last month, "disagreement with the federal government's immigration policy does not justify a violation of the [U.S. Constitution's] Supremacy Clause."

But the Supreme Court intervening, and possibly striking down S.B. 4 altogether, doesn't mean tensions will be cooled—quite the opposite.

"There is either a red wave this November or America is doomed," wrote Elon Musk on X this past weekend, in response to a video about New York City's migrant crisis. "Imagine four more years of this getting worse," he added, ominously. But one thing that will surely get worse, regardless of who gets elected in November, is the degree of polarization driving Americans further away from each other on this issue in particular. There are wonky questions worth sussing out—How many low-skilled job-seekers can our labor market bear? Are there certain low-cost-of-living areas of the country that can better accommodate migrants? How quickly should work authorization be processed?—but both political parties have chosen to sidestep these questions in favor of political posturing that does very little to serve the border-crossers in question.

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KBJ doubles down: "My biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways."

That is, quite literally, the entire point of the First Amendment—of the entire Bill of Rights. pic.twitter.com/gWMCaHDG1W

— System Update (@SystemUpdate_) March 18, 2024