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A Texas law that would deputize state and local police to question and arrest people they suspect of being in the country illegally was blocked once again. The law would also authorize local judges to order immigrants returned to the border.
The three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion late Thursday that kept the law, Senate Bill 4, from going into effect.
“For nearly 150 years, the Supreme Court has recognized that the power to control immigration — the entry, admission, and removal of aliens — is exclusively a federal power,” the ruling said.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a post on X that the state will appeal and that it has “every right to protect public safety, and I will always fight to stop illegal immigration.”
Paxton cited the dissent from Judge Andrew Oldham that said, “Today is a sad day for Texas and for our court. It is a sad day for the millions of Americans who are concerned about illegal immigration and who voiced those concerns at ballot boxes across Texas and the Nation — only to have their voices muted by federal judges.”
The ruling is a flashpoint in a two-year legal drama that began when Texas enacted the law in 2023, testing the limits of a state’s immigration enforcement powers.
The Biden administration immediately sued. The law was blocked by a federal judge in Austin, keeping it on hold as the Fifth Circuit weighed whether to allow the law to go into effect.
During that time, Donald Trump was re-elected as president. His administration dropped the lawsuit, seeking to work with Texas on immigration enforcement. But immigrant rights groups and El Paso County kept the lawsuit going.
For the plaintiffs, the ruling from the conservative Fifth Circuit was a surprise given the climate of immigration politics. The Fifth Circuit has handed down some of the most conservative rulings that have been appealed to the Supreme Court in recent years on issues like voting rights, abortion, and immigration.
“We’re very surprised and glad that the Fifth Circuit has long recognized what has long been a longstanding legal principle,” said El Paso County Attorney Christina Sanchez.
El Paso County argued the law, known as SB4, would be a burden on local governments.
“We would have had to divert law enforcement resources to handling this. How and what were we going to do to figure out who is here on legal status or not? Where were we going to put these individuals if they became arrested?” Sanchez said. “Does this bring racial profiling concerns or other civil rights concerns once these individuals are detained by our local law enforcement?”
El Paso County is one of the plaintiffs in the suit, along with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and the Texas Civil Rights project on behalf of El Paso-based Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and Austin-based American Gateways.
Jennifer Babaie, director of advocacy and legal services at Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, said SB4 would have interfered with the center’s ability to assist people.
“When government officers use their power to directly and illegally threaten immigrants, they not only place those individuals directly in harm’s way, they also directly interfere with our ability to simply do our job and meet our mission to deliver quality legal services to the most vulnerable among us,” Babaie said.
This isn’t the end of SB4. The Fifth Circuit ruling means that Texas can’t enforce the law while a lower court decides on its merits.
The Texas Newsroom's Julian Aguilar contributed to this report.
