Department of Justice Threatens to File Lawsuit if Texas Enforces New Border Security Law
Jose Nino
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Towards the end of December, the Department of Justice is cautioning Texas Governor Greg Abbott that it will file a lawsuit if Texas proceeds implementing legislation granting state officials the power to kick people out of the United States, who they suspect of residing in the country illegally.
Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton declared in a letter to the governor that this new legislation, which Abbott signed into law earlier in December, is unconstitutional and will throw a wrench in the federal government’s immigration enforcement operations.
The letter says that if Abbott does not signal the state will halt enforcement of the law by December 27, “the United States will pursue all appropriate legal remedies to ensure that Texas does not interfere with the functions of the federal government.”
The law in question is set to go into effect in March. It would let any law enforcement officer in Texas to arrest migrants accused of illegally entering the state from Mexico and grant judges the power to order their removal.
This is the latest escalation of Abbott’s border security program, Operation Lone Star, and has been used to encourage a confrontation between Texas and the Biden regime.
“Texas is prepared to take this fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to protect Texans and Americans from President Biden’s open border policies,” declared Renae Eze, Abbott’s communications director. “President Biden’s deliberate and dangerous inaction at our southern border has left Texas to fend for itself. Gov. Abbott signed Senate Bill 4 into law last week to help stop the tidal wave of illegal entry into Texas as the President refuses to enforce federal immigration laws.”
Abbott believes the law was designed in a way that “can and should be upheld in the courts on its own.” He stated that the law is necessary to halt the record number of illegal alien border crossings under the Biden regime and has accused President Joe Biden of failing to get border security on lock.
The DOJ letter declared that the US Constitution grants the federal government the power to regulate immigration and control the country’s international borders. The law “therefore intrudes into a field that is occupied by the federal government and is preempted,” the letter stated.
The Justice Department alluded to a landmark Supreme Court ruling from 2012 that determined that only the federal government has the power to enforce immigration laws.
In the aforementioned case, the Supreme Court scrapped portions of an Arizona law that granted police the power to arrest any individual suspected of being in the US illegally. Then-Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that the federal government has “broad discretion” in crafting immigration policy and that the state could not implement laws that “undermine federal law.”
“Indeed, the Supreme Court has confirmed that ‘the removal process’ must be ‘entrusted to the discretion of the Federal Government’ because a ‘decision on removability’ touches ‘on foreign relations and must be made with one voice,’” the letter read.
While the federal government should be tasked with immigration enforcement in an ideal world, we don’t live in such a polity. The fact remains that we live in an extreme moment in US history, which will require extreme measures to set things right.
Above all, states like Texas will have to take immigration enforcement into their own hands. That’s the harsh reality of American politics in contemporary times.
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