El Paso County, immigrant rights groups suing Texas over immigration law

El Paso County and two immigrant rights groups filed a lawsuit against the state of Texas Tuesday, challenging a new law that allows state and local police to arrest people suspected to be undocumented migrants.

The bill, signed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Monday, sets up a legal challenge over whether state authorities can have jurisdiction over border matters. Previously, immigration arrests have been left to federal law enforcement.

The plaintiffs claim that the new law goes directly against federal law and allows untrained local police to interfere in matters of the federal government.

“Immigration is a quintessentially federal authority,” the suit reads. “The federal government has no role in, and no control over, Texas’s scheme.”

The suit calls the new law “patently illegal,” claiming it “jettisons” the standards and protections of federal law, “grasping control over immigration from the federal government and depriving people subject to that system of all of the federal rights and due process that Congress provided to them, including the rights to contest removal and seek asylum.”

El Paso County is joined by Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and American Gateways in the suit, which is also supported by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Texas Civil Rights Project. 

The ACLU of Texas pledged last week to file a suit challenging the bill.

“Senate Bill 4 (88-4) overrides federal immigration law, fuels racial profiling and harassment, and gives state officials the unconstitutional ability to deport people without due process, regardless of whether they are eligible to seek asylum or other humanitarian protections,” Texas ACLU Director Oni Blair said in a statement last week.

“Texas politicians have pushed through some of the most radical anti-immigrant bills ever passed by any state,” she continued. “This legislation is completely out of touch with our values and who we aspire to be as Texans.”

Abbott claims the Biden administration has not done enough to stem the flow of immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border.

“The goal of Senate Bill 4 is to stop the tidal wave of illegal entry into Texas. It creates a criminal offense for illegal entry into Texas from a foreign nation for repeat offenders, that creates the events of illegal reentry with a potential prison sentence term of up to 20 years,” Abbott said at the bill signing ceremony Monday.

“Biden’s deliberate inaction has left Texas to fend for itself,” he added, suggesting that Texas has a right to defend itself.

Nearly two dozen House Democrats wrote a letter Monday calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to challenge the law. The letter, led by Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), dubs the bill “the most anti-immigrant state bill in the United States.”

“SB 4 is an unlawful attempt to engage in federal law enforcement,” the group wrote. “We urge the Department of Justice to step in immediately to intervene and prevent this harmful piece of legislation from being implemented.”

The bill has also raised challenges from the Mexican government. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador ordered the country’s Foreign Ministry to file a challenge against the law Tuesday.

The bill is scheduled to go into effect in March.