Texas Immigration Law: Here’s the Latest on SB4

A panel of three federal appeals court judges heard arguments on Wednesday in a bitter legal fight between Gov. Greg Abbott and the Biden administration over Texas’ new migrant arrest law, punctuating a dizzying series of legal developments over the last 24 hours that left migrants and many law enforcement officials in Texas confused and uncertain.

The session had been hastily convened the day before by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, leaving lawyers scrambling to prepare for a hearing that could determine whether one of the nation’s most aggressive state efforts to enforce security on the U.S.-Mexico border should be allowed to become law.

The statute, which allows Texas state and law enforcement officials to arrest and deport newly arrived undocumented immigrants, had briefly been in effect for several hours on Tuesday because of a U.S. Supreme Court procedural ruling.

Then, before midnight, the law was blocked again, this time by the appeals court panel, ruling in a 2-to-1 decision.

The confusion continued into Wednesday and extended to state troopers, local police departments and elected sheriffs, some of them eager to implement the law, known as Senate Bill 4.

The law makes it a crime to cross into Texas from another country anywhere other than a legal port of entry, punishable by jail time, a deportation order from a state court judge or both. It would apply not just to migrants on the border, but also to people in Texas cities hundreds of miles away who entered the country without authorization as long as two years prior.