Comment on this story
Comment
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday ordered state National Guard soldiers and law enforcement officers to detain and return migrants suspected of illegally crossing the U.S.-US border. Mexico, testing the extent to which its state can go so far as to try to enforce immigration law, a federal responsibility.
The order comes days after a group of right-wing Texas officials, along with some former Trump administration leaders and U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.), Asked the Republican governor to invoke the state and U.S. constitutions to declare an “invasion.” ”On the southwestern border and use his powers to repel him. Leaders of sparsely populated counties near the border with Mexico complain that they have been invaded by smuggling attempts and a growing number of migrants evading detection.
According to legal experts, the order appears unconstitutional and may have little practical impact on Abbott’s ongoing, costly and controversial border security initiative, Operation Lone Star. But it represents an escalation for the governor, who is running for re-election and looks to national office, in a broader drama full of anti-immigrant rhetoric and legally dubious actions designed to challenge the federal government’s exclusive powers over the enforcement of the immigration, potentially all the way. a conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court.
“I think with the current precedent it’s pretty clear that this is the kind of decision the federal government has to make,” said Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law. “But I also think the most relevant Supreme Court precedent may be the goal of this policy.”
In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled on a number of immigration-related laws, including SB 1070 or “show me your papers,” passed by the Arizona legislature, stating that states cannot enforce their own immigration. laws.
“I can’t imagine a legal argument under which the Texas governor would be allowed to participate in the unilateral immigration application,” said Denise Gilman, director of the University of Texas Immigration Clinic in Austin. “We don’t want each state to enforce its own immigration laws.”
Busing migrants, stopping trade: Abbott is committed to the future by divisive border plans
But Texas has invested billions, even diverting federal coronavirus relief funding, to its border crackdown, sending thousands of National Guard troops and directing Department of Public Security agents to help patrol and arrest migrants. south of Texas. With each new step, Abbott tries to blur the lines between federal and state authority. The state has transported migrants to Washington, stopped commercial traffic on international bridges for what critics called unnecessary inspections, challenged the Biden administration in court, and emptied state prisons to imprison migrants. It is also raising money to build a border barrier.
The White House on Thursday criticized Abbott’s latest plan.
“Governor Abbott’s history of immigration does not give us confidence in what he has cooked up now. His so-called Operation Lone Star put national guards and law enforcement in dangerous situations and caused a logistical nightmare that needed federal rescue. , and its secondary inspections of trucks crossing into Texas cost a billion dollars a week in trade on just one bridge without appearing. A single case of human or drug trafficking, “the White House spokesman said. , Abdullah Hasan, in a statement.
“President Biden is focusing on real political solutions to really secure our border,” the statement added.
Civil rights groups have called on the Justice Department to investigate Operation Lone Star for possible civil rights violations. The Texas Tribune reported this week that federal officials had opened an investigation into Abbott’s program, but that Justice Department officials did not answer questions about the scope of his investigation. However, a federal agency is reviewing Abbott’s change of approximately $ 1 billion in relief funding to pay for the initiative.
“This is all a spectacle,” said Claudia Muñoz, the Texas-based Grassroots Leadership group that manages a hotline for migrants detained by state officials on admission charges. “But it is also more than symbolic because it puts money behind it. Texas is testing the different ways they can take control of the immigration system, and the federal government lets them get away with it.
The governor has repeatedly accused the Biden administration of encouraging the growing number of immigrants who take risks and put their lives in the hands of smugglers to reach Texas and the United States in general. He chased the president after San Antonio law enforcement found dozens of dead and dying migrants abandoned inside a suffocating tractor trailer last month.
“While President Biden refuses to do his job and enforce immigration laws enacted by Congress, the state of Texas is on the rise again and taking unprecedented action to protect Americans and secure our border south, “Abbott said in a statement. “As the challenges at the border continue to increase, Texas will continue to take steps to address the challenges posed by the Biden administration.”
But the Biden administration has largely maintained the border policies implemented during its predecessor’s tenure, including a public health order expelling most cross-border and migrant protection protocols or the “Return to Mexico” program. The Supreme Court last month authorized the Department of Homeland Security to end the policy. White House officials and Democrats have called Abbott a hypocrite for not making similar criticisms of Trump.
Thursday’s drafting of the executive order is vague about what it means to “return migrants to the border” for soldiers and soldiers detaining them. Under the current operation, people trapped on privately owned land are arrested and transferred to state prison. Advocates say more than 3,000 migrants have been detained without formal charges, access to lawyers or the right to a speedy trial. Many were later handed over to federal authorities for deportation or deportation.
The state of Texas has no power to deport. Abbott spokeswoman Renae Eze explained that “illegal immigrants will be returned / transported back to the border in [ports of entry]. ”
“It’s discriminatory and violates civil rights,” said Laura Peña, legal director of the Texas Civil Rights Project’s Beyond Borders program. “This is just one more escalation of what is an underlying drum of racism and xenophobia that Abbott has been encouraging and that can have deadly consequences.”
But at least one Texas jurisdiction has already begun to take matters into its own hands. Kinney County, a rural livestock community in South Texas along the Rio Grande, was one of the first local governments to declare an emergency because of the “border crisis” and has become the focal point of a campaign. far-right to boost state border security. offensive. The amplification of the county campaign has caught the attention of all conservative media.
This week, the county’s top elected official, Tully Shahan, gathered a group of Texas rural sheriffs, elected leaders, Roy and former Trump administration officials Mark Morgan and Ken Cuccinelli, to declare their communities are ” waging war ”and that Biden is“ destroying Western civilization. ”The county is also tied to federal litigation over the political priorities and guidelines of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Administration that says they violate the ability of agents to enforce the law, represented by Kris Kobach, a former Kansas secretary of state known for harsh opinions.against illegal immigration.
Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe told conservative media last month that he deported four migrants after U.S. Border Patrol agents did not arrest them. He later changed his mind, explaining that people had been involved in a smuggling incident that ended in a crash. Coe, a retired Border Patrol agent, said he did not have a safe place for them in the county jail, so he put the migrants in his truck, drove to the Eagle Pass port of entry, Tex. and left them.
“Coe took them to the bridge and they crossed into Mexico and he will do it again,” Matt Benacci said. sheriff’s department spokesman. “The Border Patrol was not going to take them, so it made the best decision it could to keep them in safe circumstances.”
Lawyer Kathryn Dyer, who unsuccessfully sued for Coe to be detained in contempt for his detention of migrants, said the county has been a voluntary facilitator of Abbott’s agenda. But he said the danger comes when other jurisdictions take note and reproduce.
“Kinney has taken on that leadership role,” he said. “We are already seeing this plan and pushing these issues in other states. When there is a state that ignores the line between federal and state jurisdiction, that puts us all at risk of ignoring the law moving forward.”
Although the Abbott movement received approval from the hardest on the right, the governor did not do what the small group of sheriffs and elected leaders in Texas called for: declare an invasion.
“We recognize Governor Abbott’s recognition that the facts on the ground along the border coincide with the Constitution’s understanding of an invasion,” Cuccinelli, a National Security official under President Donald Trump, said in a statement. jointly with Russ Vought, president of the Conservative Center. to Renew America. But they said Abbott’s move didn’t go far enough and meant little more than “catching and releasing.”