Supreme Court lets Texas arrest migrants

The US Supreme Court, denying a request from the Department of Justice, gave Texas the green light Tuesday to enforce a new state law that empowers state law enforcement to jail and prosecute migrants crossing the border illegally.

Senate Bill 4 (SB4) would make illegal crossing from Mexico a crime with punishment between six months to up to 20 years for first time and repeat offenders. It would allow Texas to arrest any undocumented immigrants in the state.

The Biden administration has challenged it as an unconstitutional infringement on the federal government's power to set and enforce immigration law.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, briefly responded to the court ruling on social media, calling it "clearly a positive development''.

A federal judge in Austin blocked SB4 in February, but was overturned by the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. The Supreme Court temporarily suspended the 5th Circuit's decision but now has lifted that injunction to return the case to the appeals court to consider the law's legality and issue a prompt ruling on whether the law should be paused.

The Supreme Court did not express a view on the constitutionality of the Texas law. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, filed a concurring opinion that the high court has never reviewed the decision of an appeals court on administrative stay.

"If a decision does not issue soon, the applicants may return to this court," Barrett wrote.

The court's three liberal members, Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

"The Court gives a green light to a law that will upend the longstanding federal-state balance of power and sow chaos, when the only court to consider the law concluded that it is likely unconstitutional," Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting opinion that was joined by Jackson.

Sotomayor accused the 5th Circuit of abusing its discretion, saying it entered an unreasoned and indefinite administrative stay that altered the status quo. She argued that the 5th Circuit should've considered the constitutionality of the law and harm caused by it before allowing it to take effect.

Sotomayor wrote that the appeals court "opened the door to profound disruption. This Court makes the same mistake".

Abbott has said that SB4 is necessary to discourage illegal migration and accused the US government of not deterring illegal immigration.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called the court's action a "HUGE WIN".

"Texas has defeated the Biden Administration's and ACLU's emergency motions at the Supreme Court," he wrote on X.

The White House called SB4 unconstitutional, saying it was "just another example of Republican officials politicizing the border while blocking real solutions".

In a news conference on Tuesday afternoon, Domingo Garcia, national president of The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), said the law is unconstitutional. "It's un-Christian, immoral, and un-Texan" and would "result in large scale racial profiling" and "civil rights violations".

"If you're in a rural part of Texas, a suburban part of Texas, the fact that you look Hispanic, you look Asian, you look African American — you may be (mistaken as being) from Haiti, that (law is) going to be used as a pretext to stop people and search their vehicles and detain people," said Garcia.

This could lead to "abuses" and "tragedies", he said, adding that he could see tragic things happening when police officers try to enforce immigration laws and people might fight back because they feel they're being singled out due to their looks.

Garcia said LULAC will launch a statewide Know Your Rights program to educate people that they have a right to the Fifth Amendment, to bail and to an attorney.

The organization will look at "creating a hot line with volunteer attorneys and paralegals to assist anybody calling regarding if they felt that their civil rights were violated or if they were illegally detained or held over".

"We know that every history has shown us that whenever you start scapegoating the other, you start discriminating against the other," he said.

Garcia said that many border sheriffs are furious about the law because enforcing it will burden local government beyond tax dollars.

"Those tax dollars are going be used to basically arrest individuals who are coming here to be somebody's nanny or work in somebody's yard or working some meat packing plant. Their jails are going to be filled up. Their courtrooms are going to be filled up."