The Supreme Court on Tuesday authorized Texas authorities to detain and prosecute migrants suspected of crossing the southern US border without permission.
Giving the green light to enforce state laws on immigration known as SB4, which the Biden administration calls unconstitutional. Rejecting a Justice Department request, the high court allows a controversial Texas law, one of Gov.
At the request of the Biden administration, a federal judge blocked SB4 last month, ruling that the state measure conflicts with federal immigration law.
That decision was later upheld by the Fifth Circuit, which issued an administrative suspension to review the case. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in an opinion concurring with the majority’s decision, wrote that the court granted The Supreme Court should not second-guess the Court of Appeals.
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“To the best of my knowledge, this Court has never reviewed an appellate court’s decision to grant — or not to grant — an administrative stay,” she wrote in her agreement with Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
I think that it is unwise to invite emergency litigation into this Court on whether the appellate court has abused its discretion at this preliminary stage Three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the decision of the court’s six-member conservative majority The Court greenlights a law.
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That would upend the long-standing balance of power between the states and the feds would cause chaos, as the only court to review the law concluded that it may be unconstitutional, Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting opinion.
SB4 empowers Texas law enforcement officials, at the state and local levels, to arrest, detain, and prosecute migrants for illegal entry and reentry.
The Department of Justice said SB4 conflicts with federal law and the Constitution, emphasizing that immigration enforcement, including arrests and deportations, has long been a federal responsibility.
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In a statement Tuesday after the ruling, Mexico`s Foreign Ministry “condemned” SB4, saying it rejects any measure that would allow state or local authorities to exercise immigration control, detain and return nationals or aliens to Mexican territory.
Department of Homeland Security spokesman Luis Miranda said SB4 would “throw immigration enforcement into chaos,” noting that federal officials “do not have the authority” to help Texas apply the law.
Allowing Texas to enforce the law for more than a month “will not mean the difference between compliance and a permanent revocation of the law,” said Opinion Barrett is technical and focuses on the temporary stay granted by the Fifth Circuit, which gave Texas the green light to implement SB4 while court proceedings continue.
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