- Click here for the article.
If the U.S. Supreme Court hadn’t lurched so far to the right under former President Donald Trump, there’s a good chance the Texas Legislature may have never tried to pass the bill it voted out last night.
It was in 2012 the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot enforce immigration laws just because they don’t think the federal government is doing it well enough. Yet, reporter Jasper Scherer writes that the Texas House voted anyhow to pass legislation that would allow Texas law enforcement to arrest people they suspect to have crossed the border illegally and order them back to Mexico.
Democrats, civil rights groups and even some Republicans have warned the bill flat out conflicts with the U.S. Constitution and that 2012 Supreme Court ruling.
But that may be the point. Since that 2012 ruling, Trump was able to add Amy Coney Barrett, Neal Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the court. Some Republicans are convinced if they could get the issue to the Supreme Court again, the more conservative justices might just flip the 5 to 3 ruling in 2012, much like what happened last year with the challenge to Roe v Wade.
During a contentious debate on the Texas House floor, state Rep. Victoria Neave Criado, a Dallas Democrat, accused Republicans of engineering the bill for that purpose, a charge state Rep. David Spiller, the North Texas Republican who led the bill, denied.
But when the same bill cleared the Texas Senate last week, state Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, acknowledged it is “testing and pushing envelopes.”
The ACLU of Texas has already vowed to sue the state over the bill if Gov. Greg Abbott signs the it into law as he has promised to do. And now comes word Mexico opposes the legislation, which raises questions about how Texas would enforce the law if Mexico blocks people from other countries from reentering that nation.
__________
For more, click here: Texas legislators approve bill allowing police to arrest people who cross the border illegally.
For the bill itself, click here: SB4 (88-4)
