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Expert: Texas Statute a "Frontal Assault" on Federal Immigration Law

February 02, 2024 (1 min read)

David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 1, 2024

"For more than a century, immigration and border enforcement have been seen as falling exclusively under federal control, and when states tried to exert a greater role, courts shut them down. Texas is now moving to challenge that legal interpretation with the more conservative Supreme Court majority. And the outcome may turn on a lone 2012 dissent by the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. ... In December, [Texas Gov. Greg] Abbott signed into law SB 4, a measure that would authorize Texas police and state judges to arrest, detain and deport migrants who are suspected of crossing the border illegally. It was seen as a direct challenge to the 2012 Supreme Court decision that struck down a similar law in the case of Arizona vs. United States. It was that decision which prompted Scalia’s dissent. “This is a frontal assault on the federal primacy in immigration enforcement, and it’s definitely going to the Supreme Court,” said Cornell law professor Stephen Yale-Loehr.