CV NEWS FEED // A federal judge on Thursday granted the Biden administration’s request to temporarily block a Texas law that made illegal immigration a crime in the Lone Star State.
Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed SB 4 into law in December. About two weeks later, the Biden Department of Justice (DOJ) announced its lawsuit, claiming “Texas cannot run its own immigration system.”
Senior District Court Judge David A. Ezra this week “issued a preliminary injunction preventing the law from taking effect while the case proceeds,” The Daily Caller reported.
Ezra wrote in his ruling: “[I]t is clear that the plaintiffs, particularly the US, will suffer grave irreparable harm were SB 4 to take effect.”
The judge stated that if the law were “allowed to proceed” it “could open the door to each state passing its own version of immigration laws.”
“The effect would moot the uniform regulation of immigration throughout the country and force the federal government to navigate a patchwork of inconsistent regulations,” he argued.
“The Court is sympathetic to Texas’s concerns at the border, but to say that the Biden Administration has ‘abandoned’ the field of immigration is to take hyperbolic criticism literally,” added Ezra. “Contrary to Texas’s position, the record is replete with examples and evidence of the federal government carrying out its immigration duties.”
At the time Abbott signed SB 4, The Texas Tribune reported that it “would authorize police to arrest people they suspect crossed the Rio Grande between ports of entry.”
The New York Post noted at the time that those “arrested under the law will be able to choose whether to follow a judge’s orders to leave the country or be prosecuted and face either jail or a fine up to $2,000.”
CatholicVote indicated that SB 4 was “set to take effect in March.” CatholicVote continued:
In addition, [SB 4] provides over $1.5 billion in earmarks to construction of Texas’ border wall as well as $40 million for law enforcement to protect areas where high numbers of illegal immigrants are thought to live.
>> TEXAS GOV. ABBOTT SIGNS BILL MAKING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION A CRIME IN THE STATE <<
In their suit, the DOJ claimed the bill “intrude[s] on the federal government’s exclusive authority to regulate the entry and removal of noncitizens, frustrate[s] the United States’ immigration operations and proceedings, and interfere[s] with U.S. foreign relations.”
Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton said in January that the administration “brought this action to ensure that Texas adheres to the framework adopted by Congress and the Constitution for regulation of immigration.”
Ezra’s ruling marked the latest development in what has been a months-long back-and-forth clash between the Biden and Abbott administrations over immigration policy.
On January 24, the Texas governor invoked his state’s “Constitutional Right to Self-Defense.” All but one of Abbott’s 26 fellow Republican governors supported his stunning move.
Abbott wrote in a statement that day: “The failure of the Biden Administration to fulfill the duties imposed by [Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution] has triggered [Article I, Section 10, Clause 3], which reserves to this state the right of self-defense.”
“For these reasons, I have already declared an invasion … to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself,” he emphasized.
>> BIDEN ADMIN SUES TEXAS OVER STATE LAW MAKING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION A CRIME <<
In September 2023, Ezra issued a controversial ruling blocking Texas’ age-verification law, which would have protected children from accessing internet pornography.
The judge claimed the bipartisan law that passed by a near-unanimous margin in the Texas Legislature violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“People will be particularly concerned about accessing controversial speech when the state government can log and track that access,” he wrote. “By verifying information through government identification, the law will allow the government to peer into the most intimate and personal aspects of people’s lives.”
Ezra was appointed to the federal bench by then-President Ronald Reagan in 1988.