The joy in Texas over Saturday’s federal appeals court ruling that allowed the state to enforce its new strict state law on immigration was short-lived. On Monday, Biden’s Justice Department filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court, asking the justices to temporarily block enforcement of the law. The court has blocked the law from going into effect until March 13th while it reviews the case.
Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott has promised to protect “our state—and our nation—from President Biden’s border crisis,” and his bill was intended to do just that. The new law would make it a state crime to illegally enter or re-enter Texas from a foreign country. It allows state authorities to arrest and jail illegal immigrants and would give state judges the power to order deportations, with prison sentences up to 20 years for those who refuse to comply.
Governor Abbott has vowed to use every tool and strategy to secure the state’s border with Mexico “until President Biden fulfills his constitutional duty to enforce federal immigration laws already on the books.”
Texas is one of the border states feeling the brunt of Joe Biden’s lax immigration policies, which have led to a record number of migrants entering the United States from Mexico. The U.S. Border Patrol had nearly 250,000 encounters with migrants on the border with Mexico last December, the highest monthly total on record. Since Democrat Biden came into office more than three years ago, the number of illegal immigrants has massively increased. The number of arrests made at the border skyrocketed in the first fiscal year (ending in September 2021) of Biden’s presidency: it grew to 1.66 million compared to the final fiscal year of former President Donald Trump, when there were 405,000 apprehensions. The situation has only worsened since, with a record-breaking 2.2 million arrests in 2022 and 2 million in 2023. There have already been more than 750,000 encounters in the first four months of the 2024 fiscal year.
In the United States, immigration matters are handled by the federal government, not states. While Texas has argued it is “entitled to defend itself from an invasion,” the White House called the law “harmful and unconstitutional.” The Justice Department believes the bill would harm the U.S. relationship with Mexico and other countries.
Greg Abbott has been at the forefront of a Republican backlash against Biden’s policies. Two years ago he started the practice of bussing migrants to Democrat-led cities so they would be forced to shoulder the burden of the crisis. Texas has transported more than 104,000 migrants to New York, Chicago, Denver, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., cities that had proclaimed themselves sanctuary cities for migrants, but are now unable to cope with the huge influx of people.
Arizona also began bussing migrants in 2022, and Florida has also done so.
It is not yet known whether the Supreme Court will allow the new Texas law to be enforced or not, but a 2012 Supreme Court ruling struck down key provisions of a similar Arizona immigration law.
The immigration issue will certainly influence the outcome of the presidential election in November, where Biden’s Republican rival will most likely be former President Donald Trump in a rerun of the 2020 election. According to a poll by the Pew Research Center, a sizable majority of Americans say the large number of migrants seeking to enter the country at the Mexico border is either a crisis (45%) or a major problem (32%).
