By Thomas Kika
Weekend Staff Writer
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Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Monday hailed "huge news" from an appeals court ruling pertaining to the U.S.-Mexico border.
In recent months, Abbott, a Republican, and his administration have been engaged in a heated back-and-forth with federal forces over who has the authority over the southern border. Abbott, like many others in the GOP, has characterized the recent influx of migrants crossing into the U.S. as a "crisis" and has attempted to leverage more authority for his state government to police the situation. Legal experts have countered that the U.S. Constitution grants the federal government authority over matters concerning immigration.
On Thursday, a lower court in Texas blocked the implementation of the state legislature's Senate Bill 4, which gave state authorities sweeping authority to arrest and detain migrants crossing the border into the U.S. illegally. In his ruling, Judge David Alan Ezra warned that allowing the law to stand "could open the door to each state passing its own version of immigration laws."
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On Saturday, however, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary halt on that lower court ruling. The decision will not go into effect until Saturday, March 9, giving the federal government a week to argue for the blockage of Texas' Senate Bill 4 before the U.S. Supreme Court. Without any intervention from the highest court in the land, the law will then be implemented.
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Taking to his official X, formerly Twitter, account on Monday, Abbott hailed that ruling as "huge news."
"Federal appeals court allows Texas immigration law to take effect," the governor wrote. "Law enforcement officers in Texas are now authorized to arrest & jail any illegal immigrants crossing the border."
Newsweek reached out to the White House via email for comment on Monday afternoon. Any responses received will be added to this story in a later update.
Critics of the law, which Abbott signed back in December, have argued that its implementation would lead to a major increase in racial profiling in Texas. El Paso County, a major point of entry for migrants crossing the border, also joined in with the Department of Justice (DOJ) in suing the Texas government over the bill, claiming that the spike in arrests that it would produce would put an excessive strain on its jail system.
Abbott and other Texas officials have claimed that the law is necessary and that the state has the right to more actively police immigration, claiming that it's "entitled to defend itself from an invasion" and arguing that the migrant influx constitutes an invasion, an assertion that critics have strongly disagreed with.
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