US Supreme Court extends hold on Texas law that would allow police to arrest migrants

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday extended a hold on a new and expansive Texas immigration law that was set to take effect at 4 p.m., preventing state law enforcement officers, at least for now, from arresting, jailing and even deporting people suspected of illegally crossing into Texas from Mexico.

With a last-minute motion Monday, the high court continued its stay of Senate Bill 4 indefinitely as the justices consider several constitutional challenges to the law.

"Since day one, we’ve highlighted how blatantly unconstitutional SB4 is," the Texas House Mexican American Legislative Caucus posted on X after the ruling. "This reckless and irresponsible attempt by the state to seize control and circumvent 150 years of federal immigration law was a new low for Texas.

"While SB 4 continues to have a long legal battle ahead, millions of mixed-status Texan families can breathe a sigh of relief."

The court's decision became public just after the 4 p.m. deadline, which Justice Samuel Alito set last week. SB 4 would allow Texas law enforcement officers to arrest migrants suspected of entering the U.S. illegally and to force them to accept deportation orders or face stiffer criminal penalties.

SB 4, which Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law in December, had previously been scheduled to take effect March 5 before rights groups and the Justice Department challenged the new legislation's constitutionality.

However, since Alito first expressed the high court's interest in taking up the case by issuing an initial hold on the law March 4 and extending it March 11 before ordering an indefinite stay Monday, the Texas immigration provision has remained under the court's purview.

During a special session in November, the Texas Legislature passed SB 4, which codifies a series of penalties for anyone suspected of illegally crossing into Texas from Mexico other than through an international port of entry. The penalties range from a Class B misdemeanor to a second-degree felony.

SB 4, which faced heavy opposition from Democrats and civil rights groups throughout the 2023 legislative calendar, also requires people accused of illegally crossing into Texas to either accept a magistrate judge's deportation order or face a second-degree felony charge for noncompliance.

"The U.S. Supreme Court has extended its pause on #SB4 until further order," the ACLU of Texas posted on X immediately after the order was handed down. "We’re not backing down until this anti-immigrant law is gone once and for all."

In issuing the first hold on SB 4 in Austin, Judge David Ezra of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas said the state's attempt to enforce immigration law falls under the federal government's established control of monitoring ingress and egress across the country's borders. 

Ezra also took issue with several of the bill's constitutional concerns while disagreeing with Texas' attorneys' comparison of migrant influxes to an active invasion. 

"Finally, to allow Texas to permanently supersede federal directives on the basis of an invasion would amount to nullification of federal law and authority — a notion that is antithetical to the Constitution and has been unequivocally rejected by federal courts since the Civil War," Ezra wrote in February.

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On Monday morning, before the court extended its hold on SB 4, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick doubled down on the invasion argument during an interview on Fox News, calling on the justices to understand that Texas is being overrun by drugs and crime.

"We’re being attacked," Patrick said, pleading for the law to take effect. "By land, by sea, by air. Literally millions coming across the border. Many armed.

"By every, every definition of the Constitution, it’s clear to me that this is an invasion. It’s a hostile group. It’s an organized militia, in essence," Patrick said, lambasting President Joe Biden and accusing him of pushing an open border policy.

The Biden administration has pushed for tougher border enforcement policies, but the bill was blocked by U.S. Senate Republicans after former President Donald Trump asked for the legislation to be derailed to keep the president from taking a legislative win.

Patrick on Monday morning went on to defended the law and Texas' right to legislate on immigration issues, celebrating SB 4, which was passed by Rep. David Spiller, R-Jacksboro, and Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, who carried the bill in the Senate after Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, stepped away from authoring the law out of constitutional concerns.

"It basically says we can arrest, we can detain and we can either put you in jail or send you back," Patrick said on "Fox and Friends." "We can do that. And we should have that right."

Arguing that Texas will probably be unable to defend the validity of SB 4, the rights groups and federal government have called the invasion argument an incorrect interpretation of state war powers and an inaccurate and unfair characterization of immigrants.

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The invasion rhetoric, prosecutors have argued across court settings, is similar to other state-level immigration complaints that arose from migrant influxes to the West Coast from Asia in the 1840s, subsequent immigration patterns from Southern Europe at the turn of the 20th century and mass migration spurred by World War II. 

"In support of that startling request, the state emphasizes its concerns regarding immigration enforcement, citing the number of recent migrants, along with vague and tenuous attempts to tie asylum-seekers to danger, crime and drugs," the prosecutors told the Supreme Court. "None of this is new."

Outside of the federal government's challenge, a new lawsuit filed last week also seeks to prevent SB 4 from taking effect, citing a bevy of constitutional concerns and pointing to the law as a clear violation of the Fourth, Eighth and 14th Amendments and an intrusion into federal authority.

In their suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in Austin last week, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the National Immigration Law Center argue that plaintiffs in the case face an unlawful potential for arrest, detention, prosecution, incarceration and removal to Mexico despite being granted lawful immigration statuses by the federal government. 

"Empowering state officers to decide who unlawfully crosses the border with a foreign nation conflicts with federal immigration law, which grants that power only to federal officers," the lawsuit states.