Any bad news for #GregAbbott is good news for Texas. SB4 which would allow police to arrest/detain any "suspected" illegal migrant... that is to say: illegal, legal, or just looks too tanned, has remained blocked. For now.
A 3-judge panel of Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals said that it was dissolving its own earlier ruling, which had cleared the way for the law to be implemented once the #SupremeCourt acted.
The late-night reversal meant that an #injunction imposed by a #federal district court last month would again be in force, blocking the #law from being in effect.
The back-&-forth series of #legal orders — & the on-again-off-again reality of a sweeping new #state-level #immigration law— prompted uncertainty along the #border & defiance from #Mexico’s govt on Tues.
Even before the #FifthCircuit’s late order, it had been unclear when #Texas would begin making arrests under the law.
Here is the brief, late-night #FifthCircuit federal appeals court ruling that effectively again blocked a #Texas#immigration#law, #SB4, hours after the #SCOTUS had cleared the way for it to take effect. The TX law would make it a #crime to cross into the state from #Mexico, giving local authorities the #power to #arrest people suspected of illegally entering the country.
The number of things wrong with this ruling is extensive, including the Court's argument that removing the stay and allowing Texas to enforce SB4 is merely business as usual, and a procedural matter for the highest court in the land; which is a fancy legal way of saying "we're going to allow a white supremacist governor to police brown people and upend federalism but we don't want to be blamed for it."
Beyond that however, there are two major problems here. Firstly the law allows for the arrest and detention, by a state openly embracing white supremacy and fascism, of people suspected of entering or re-entering the country illegally - which is a recipe for legalized persecution of pretty much every brown person in Texas:
"Senate Bill 4, signed into law by Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in December, immediately raised concerns among immigration advocates of increased racial profiling as well as detentions and attempted deportations by state authorities in Texas, where Latinos represent 40% of the population."
The second issue of course, is that this law effectively implodes the very foundations of federalism and the division of powers between the US government, and state authorities. This overturns more than a century of legal precedent in which the federal government has control over who may enter the U.S. and deportations, placing authority to do so in the hands of reactionary state officials hell bent on persecuting brown people and maintaining a white ethno-state; no matter how many lives that upends. This direct assault on federal authority is likely a precursor to ultimately overturning Arizona v. United States and declaring open season on migrants, and even American citizens who happen to look like migrants.
"The law, Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, “upends the federal-state balance of power that has existed for over a century, in which the National Government has had exclusive authority over entry and removal of noncitizens.”
Look the fact of the matter is, there is no way to tell the difference between a migrant illegally residing in the United States, and a citizen who just happens to be brown or of Latinx descent, until you detain that person and demand papers/begin an investigation. Thus Senate Bill 4 (and the copy-cat laws that will no doubt spawn from it) is objectively a white supremacist law that empowers states, many of whom are run by openly fascist legislatures at this point, to fuck with brown people for just existing. That is the law's intended purpose, and regardless of how the courts intend to rule at a later date, as of right now, Texas is free to start policing people based entirely on their skin color; this is a power that is specifically not entrusted to states and state policing authorities for a reason - because we know you racist crackers are going to use it to fuck with brown people at every possible opportunity.
And the reason SCOTUS is allowing it even temporarily, is almost certainly because they know that once you let that genie out of the bottle, it's going to be awfully hard to put it back in.
Update: The Fifth Circuit court has put the bill on pause again, albeit not for long because there's a hearing on SB4 this morning (Wednesday.) Assuming that Court's fashy history holds, this may still allow it to then go back to the Supreme Court. You can read more about it at: https://www.lawdork.com/p/scotus-texas-sb4-immigration-law-shadow-docket
Everything I wrote about the bill and what it means is true, but given how terrifying the law Texas is trying to pass is, I came to update this as soon as I found out the 5th Circuit decided to do its job.
JUST NOW: SCOTUS is allowing Texas to enforce its extreme “show me your papers” law.
If any folks think that only undocumented immigrants will be affected by #SB4, they are sadly mistaken. Governor Greg Abbott’s nativist crackdown has already been profiling and targeting US citizens.
The #SupremeCourt on Tues cleared the way for Texas to immediately begin enforcing one of the nation’s harshest immigration laws, which opponents say would disrupt more than a century of #federal control over #international borders.
#Biden WH blasts #SCOTUS ruling letting Texas #SB4 immigration crackdown law take effect. 'We fundmentally disagree' with the high court's order per the WH PressSec.