NEW ORLEANS - The U.S. Fifth Circuit of Appeals has affirmed an injunction blocking a Texas law that would allow police to arrest suspected illegal immigrants.
In 2023, the Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 4, a controversial law relating to prohibitions on the illegal entry into the state and subsequent removal procedures.
The Biden Administration, along with other plaintiffs, including the Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, sued Texas over the law and a district court granted a preliminary injunction, court records show.
And although the U.S. has since voluntarily dismissed its complaint, on July 3 the Fifth Circuit found in favor of the remaining plaintiffs, affirming the lower court’s ruling.
The Fifth Circuit held that for nearly 150 years the Supreme Court has recognized that the power to control immigration “is exclusively a federal power.”
“Despite this fundamental axiom, S.B. 4 creates separate, distinct state criminal offenses for unauthorized entry and reentry of aliens into Texas from a foreign nation, and it provides procedures for their removal,” the opinion states.
Circuit Judge Andrew Oldham dissented, opining that the majority has usurped Texas’ “sovereign right to police its border and to battle illegal immigration.”
“Today is a sad day for Texas and for our court,” he wrote. “It is a sad day for the millions of Americans who are concerned about illegal immigration and who voiced those concerns at ballot boxes across Texas and the Nation—only to have their voices muted by federal judges. And it is a sad day for the rule of law.”
Case No. 24-50149
