El Paso County is suing Texas in an effort to block its new migrant detention law
El Paso County and two immigrant rights groups sued Texas officials Tuesday to challenge a sweeping new law that allows state and local police to arrest migrants crossing from Mexico, setting off a legal showdown over federal immigration policy.
The federal lawsuit came a day after Governor Greg Abbott signed the bill, which he called “so extreme” that he believed it would drive migrants out of Texas. Civil rights and immigrant rights groups and Democratic officials said the law violated the Constitution and invited racial profiling of Hispanic citizens in Texas.
In the lawsuit, El Paso County and the two nonprofits argue that the state law should be struck down in its entirety because the federal government has exclusive jurisdiction over immigration matters.
The suit, filed in federal court in Austin, names as defendants the Texas Department of Public Safety, whose officers would be given new powers to make arrests under the law, and El Paso District Attorney Bill Hicks , whose office would prosecute the violations. . The American Civil Liberties Union represents the plaintiffs.
Mr. Abbott, a Republican, anticipated such a challenge. He has presented the law as a necessary response to what he has called President Biden’s inability to enforce existing federal law against unauthorized entry into the United States.
A spokesman for Mr. Abbott did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit, nor did Mr. Hicks, who has said his office would not prioritize the arrests of migrants. A spokesperson for the Department of Public Safety referred questions to Mr. Abbott’s office.
Republicans have blamed President Biden for the wave of migrants entering the United States in record numbers over the past three years, a trend that has become a political burden for him as he seeks re-election.
Over the past two years, Mr. Abbott, a third-term Republican, has steadily ramped up a strategy of enforcing state lines, challenging the Biden administration to take Texas to court over it. The governor and Republican-controlled state Legislature have increasingly clashed with the municipal governments of Texas cities where Democrats are largely in charge. Mr. Abbott has spoken publicly with mayors and district attorneys in Texas about a range of policies, including coronavirus restrictions, enforcement of abortion bans and police accountability.
The top officials in El Paso County, which includes the city of El Paso, are Democrats. Before the law was signed, the El Paso sheriff’s office, a county agency, said it opposed the new law’s approach and would not make any arrests under the law.
Mr. Abbott has tried to pressure Democratic leaders in several of the nation’s largest cities outside Texas by ferrying tens of thousands of migrants from the Texas border to destinations including New York, Washington, Los Angeles and Chicago.
The new state law, known as Senate Bill 4 and set to take effect in March, makes it a misdemeanor to enter Texas from Mexico without using an authorized port of entry. A person arrested under the law can be ordered by a court to return to Mexico or face prosecution if he or she does not agree to go. A second unauthorized crossing would be a criminal offense.
An asylum claim would not protect a migrant from arrest or prosecution for illegal entry under the new state law unless asylum had already been granted. But the process of assessing an asylum application often takes years.
“It is likely that a dragnet will emerge that entraps not only undocumented immigrants, but also Americans and legal permanent residents,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro, Democrat of San Antonio, who has asked the Justice Department to to prevent the law from coming into force. .
According to the lawsuit, the Texas law is an attempt to “seize control of immigration from the federal government and deprive people subject to that system of all the federal rights and due process that Congress has provided them.”
Mr. Abbott said Monday that while he believed the law would withstand judicial scrutiny, it gave the federal courts and ultimately the Supreme Court an opportunity to reconsider a 2012 decision, Arizona v. United States, which narrowly benefit of the law. the federal government and against state efforts to enact their own immigration laws.
In the complaint, attorneys for El Paso County estimate that the law could lead to 8,000 additional arrests per year, which would impose high costs on district courts and jails and could disrupt the relationship between the county government and its large immigrant community. The county, which has a population of 869,000, estimates that new jail facilities would cost more than $160 million, along with another $24 million a year to house migrants arrested under the law.
The two nonprofits that joined the county in filing the lawsuit — Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and American Gateways, both of which provide legal services to migrants — said the law would affect their ability to help migrants, including asylum seekers. would harm.
“Governor Abbott’s efforts to circumvent the federal immigration system and deny people their right to due process are not only unconstitutional, but dangerously error-prone,” said Anand Balakrishnan, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, in a statement.