A federal appeals court heard arguments Wednesday from Texas and the federal government about whether it should continue blocking a new Texas law that would let state police arrest migrants suspected of entering the U.S. illegally.
The three-judge panel from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans now has to rule on the appeal of a lower courtโs injunction that stopped Senate Bill 4 from going into effect. The same panel decided to keep SB 4 on holdย a week agoย until it could rule on whether the law is constitutional.
The Biden administration and civil rights organizationsย sued Texas to stop the law, claiming SB 4 is unconstitutional because it interferes with federal immigration laws. The lawโs proponents have argued that the law simply mirrors federal law, which they claim is not being enforced by federal authorities.
Texas Solicitor Generalย Aaron Lloyd Nielson told the appellate panel on Wednesday morning that the law was crafted in a way that โgoes up to the line of Supreme Court precedent,โ and conceded it may have crossed that line.
Gov.ย Greg Abbottย has saidย the law was written to be consistent with a dissenting opinion in a landmark 2012 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that local police do not have the authority to arrest someone solely based on their immigration status because that responsibility falls to the federal government.
โTo be fair, maybe Texas went too far,โ Nielson told the judges Wednesday. โThatโs the question this court is going to have to decide, but thatโs the context of which we are here.โ
SB 4 makes illegally crossing the border a Class B misdemeanor, carrying a punishment of up to six months in jail. Repeat offenders could face a second-degree felony with a punishment of two to 20 years in prison.
The law also requires state judges to order migrants returned to Mexico if they are convicted. A judge could drop the charges if a migrant agrees to return to Mexico voluntarily.
Nielsen said Wednesday that under the law, Texas โdoesnโt deport anybody.โ He said police would take migrants to a port of entry, which are controlled by the federal government.
โTexas takes them to a port of entry and the United States then decides what to do,โ Nielsen said. โThatโs critical about this โฆ itโs portrayed as Texas is ourself just like flying people off to some other place and thatโs not accurate.โ
Mexican officials have said they wonโt accept repatriations from Texas. Mexico has agreements with the federal government detailing which migrants it will accept after theyโre deported by U.S. immigration officials.
Biden administration lawyer Daniel Bentele Hahs Tenny pointed to a part SB 4 that requires a person to be returned to the country from which they entered the U.S.
โThey now say, I guess, that you donโt actually have to do that, that maybe you just go to the port of entry and thatโs good enough,โ Tenny said.
Judge Andrew Oldham, a Trump nominee who dissented in last weekโs ruling that continued blocking SB 4, grilled Tenny about what authority states have and where that authority ends due to the federal governmentโs jurisdiction.
The hearing Wednesday was the latest chapter in a saga of contradicting rulings from different courts that briefly let the law go into effect for roughly nine hours, resulting inย confusion about enforcementย and panic among immigrant families across the stateย who remain on edgeย about how the law will be enforced.
This article was written by ALEJANDRO SERRANO of The Texas Tribune. This article originally appeared at : https://www.texastribune.org/2024/04/03/texas-senate-bill-4-appeals-court-hearing-immigration/