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A state district judge Thursday may have set in motion a new wave of legal challenges to Gov. Greg Abbott’s trouble-plagued border security initiative, ruling that one migrant’s arrest on state misdemeanor trespassing charges violated the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause because immigration enforcement is the federal government’s job.
Though the ruling may be appealed and applies only to Jesús Guzmán Curipoma, a 36-year-old oil engineer, it opened the door to constitutional challenges from more of the thousands of migrants who have been imprisoned for allegedly trespassing since July, when the governor set his sights on mass trespassing arrests as a way to cut down on border crossings.
“Everybody who has a pending misdemeanor trespassing arrest under OLS will have the exact same challenge,” said Kristin Etter, an attorney with the Texas RioGrande Legal Aid who represents hundreds of migrants. “This sets a clear precedent in all of those cases both pending and future.”
Though far from the first court challenge to Abbott’s arrest initiative — which has been vexed with wrongful arrests, prosecutorial errors, court delays and ethics complaints — Soifer’s ruling is the first to rule against the constitutionality of a migrant’s trespassing arrest, according to Etter.
On Friday morning, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton vowed to appeal the ruling, though it's not yet clear how he will do so since his office was not a party in the lawsuit. A spokesperson for Abbott said Friday morning that "there is no doubt that this will be overturned."
"The district court did not have legal authority to enter this flawed and collusive judgment without hearing from the Office of the Attorney General," Nan Tolson said in a statement.
