Greg Abbott just raised the stakes in his anti-Biden immigration war

Members of Congress want Department of Justice to challenge Texas law

Greg Abbott has turned up the temperature once again in his battle against the Biden administration over immigration policy.

On Monday, the Republican governor of Texas signed a suite of new border bills, including SB4, which makes it a state crime to illegally cross into Texas from Mexico.

The law lets Texas police arrest those suspected of being in the country without authorisation, and state courts can sentence repeat offenders to up to 20 years in prison. Judges can drop charges if migrants agree to be sent to Mexico.

Critics say the effort amounts to an illegal power grab from Texas that ignores asylum rights and other protections, all while usurping the exclusively federal power of immigration enforcement.

Mr Abbott, for his part, has framed the moves as an explicit response to the Biden White House’s record confronting record migration over the last year.

“Biden’s deliberate inaction has left Texas to fend for itself,” the governor said at a signing ceremony this week.

Gov. Greg Abbott signs three bills into law at a border wall construction site in Brownsville, Texas on 18 December that aims to deter illegal immigration (AP)

The governor’s aggressive border agenda – building military-style ramparts on and in Rio Grande river, sending state troopers to the border, and declaring that Texas is under “invasion” – is all but explicitly designed to provoke a high-profile clash with the federal government.

The DoJ is already suing Texas over its efforts this summer to install razor-tipped buoys along the Rio Grande, and has thus far been successful at the appeals level, with a federal court ruling the state must remove the barrier for the time being.

But the battle is just beginning.

Democratic members of Congress, including Joaquin Castro of Texas, have urged the Biden Department of Justice to sue again to stop Texas’s latest border move.

“This bill is set to be the most extreme anti-immigrant state bill in the United States; it is clearly preempted by federal law and when it goes into effect will likely result in racial profiling,” the representatives wrote in a letter Monday to Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The Independent has contacted the DoJ for comment.

At the state level, SB4 has already come in for legal scrutiny.

The Department of Justice has sued Texas over installation of floating border barrier in Rio Grande (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

On Tuesday, civil rights groups and the county of El Paso sued Texas officials to challenge the law, alleging it is “patently illegal” and gives state officials “unprecedented power to arrest, detain, and deport noncitizens in the State of Texas.”

The suit, filed in federal court, argues that SB4 oversteps into federal prerogatives around immigration, and ignores potential federal defences migrants might have to stay in the country, including temporary residence, DACA, and the legally protected right to seek asylum.

The ACLU of Texas, one of the groups challenging the bill, argues the bill will drive racial profiling.

“In practice, SB4 could mean Texans being stopped by police because of our skin color or the languages we speak,” the group wrote in a statement on X.

“We deserve better than racial profiling, harassment, and cruelty disguised as immigration policy.”

The county of El Paso, meanwhile, argues the bill goes against its policy priorities and will saddle the area with nearly $190m in additional enforcement and jail costs.

The Independent has contacted the Texas Department of Public Safety and the 34th Judicial District, the state entities named as defendants in the civil rights suit.

Civil rights group say Texas state immigration efforts have driven racial profiling (Getty Images)

In 2012, the Supreme Court partially struck down an Arizona law nicknamed the “show me your papers” bill, which required state police during traffic stops to investigate the immigration status of people suspected of being undocumented, and punished those caught without papers.

Still, that hasn’t stopped Texas from pursuing an immigration agenda many civil rights advocates argue is unconstitutional and targeted at communities of colour.

The governor declared a state disaster at the US-Mexico border in 2021 and funneled an estimated $1bn in federal Covid relief funds to Operation Lone Star, the umbrella plan Mr Abbott has used to send state troopers to the border and bus thousands of migrants out of Texas to liberal jurisdictions.

The Department of Justice is investigating Operation Lone Star for alleged civil rights abuses.

Operation Lone star has lead to car chases and traffic stops disproportionately targeting Latinos.

“There is significant evidence that DPS is engaged in racial profiling — discriminating against Latinx drivers and passengers — in these stops,” the ACLU of Texas and the Texas Civil Rights Project wrote in a 2022 complaint to the DoJ. “And, troublingly, the stops turn into deadly vehicle pursuits with alarming frequency.”

Observers have told The Independent that despite the governor’s tough talk, there’s little evidence his policies have impacted migration patterns.

“We’ve spent $12bn over the last decade, and we have nothing to show for it,” Jaime Puente, director of economic opportunity programmes at the advocacy group Every Texan, which monitors the state budget, told The Independent earlier this year. “People are not being deterred from coming to the US to seek a better life and opportunities…no matter how deadly we make that journey.”

Texas state officials have testified that SB4 could lead to an estimated 72,000 arrests per year.

The governor’s office told The Independent this summer that Operation Lone Star had led to the apprehension of more than 393,000 unauthorised immigrants and the repelling of more than 49,000 illegal immigrants, as well as over 31,000 arrests, “all of which would have otherwise made their way into communities across Texas and our country thanks to President Biden’s open border policies.”