On Tuesday, the same day Texas was briefly allowed to enforce a new law giving police officers the power to arrest unauthorized migrants, Iowa lawmakers passed a law making it a crime to enter their state after being deported or denied entry into the United States. .

At least seven states, all controlled by Republicans, hope to follow suit or have already considered bills that have not passed.

The flood of laws and proposals aimed at cracking down on undocumented immigrants entering the country is part of the extraordinary mix of immigration, lawsuits and politics that is creating legal gridlock in the courts and confusion at the border.

However, the fate of all these bills will most likely depend on the outcome of the Texas case, according to legal analysts and groups involved in migration issues. If Texas’ law is upheld, observers expect more bills from Republican states modeled on what Texas did.

Kansas and Oklahoma are among the states that have introduced legislation this year regarding illegal entry into the United States, following the law in Texas.

Louisiana became the latest on Monday. And Missouri has two bills, including An sponsored by State Senator Bill Eigel, who is one of the leading candidates for governor this year.

Mr. Eigel, who represents a St. Louis suburb, described the surge at the border as an “invasion” and blamed “the failure of our federal government under President Joe Biden to deal with it” during a committee hearing last week to go’.

It’s too early to tell whether these bills will progress as far as Iowa’s. Bills in West Virginia and Mississippi have already failed. And a similar bill passed by Arizona’s Republican-controlled Legislature was vetoed by Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat.

But none of the other states eyeing immigration laws like Texas’s have Democratic governors.

Still, supporters and opponents of the Texas law said they wouldn’t be surprised if lawmakers in other states try to introduce similar measures as most legislative sessions begin to wind down in the coming months.

“The bigger picture is that given the scope of illegal immigration and the impact it has on states and local communities, we are likely to see more efforts on the part of these jurisdictions to try to discourage people from settling there illegally,” said Ira Mehlman, spokesperson for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which supports reducing both legal and undocumented immigration.

Spencer Amdur, a senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said immigrant advocates are considering legal challenges to the Iowa legislation, which Gov. Kim Reynolds has pledged to sign.

Among other objections, Mr. Amdur argued that the regulation of entry and removal was exclusively federal. He also said the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states cannot unilaterally enforce immigration rules.

“We think the Iowa law is illegal for the same reasons we think the Texas law is illegal,” he said.

Mr Amdur noted that while most bills to date contain similar wording, Oklahoma was something elsepartly because of one phrase: ‘unlawfully present’.

Under Oklahoma’s proposal, anyone who was arrested and charged with a crime and then determined to be “unlawfully present” in the country would be guilty of a felony punishable by a minimum of 10 years in prison.

Jacob Hamburger, a visiting law professor at Cornell, said the proposed laws risk leading to racial profiling. He also said that if the courts uphold Texas law — basically that “Texas can have its own deportation policy” — states led by Democratic governors who have tried to strengthen immigrant protections could be emboldened to push for more lenient labor licensing and other laws. policy.

But for now, he said, “aspects of Texas’ overall strategy — such as this public campaign to transport migrants to cities — may have weakened Democrats’ commitment to immigrants.”

The thirteen federal appellate courts across the country are located just below the U.S. Supreme Court. In theory, the courts of appeal, each covering a judicial circuit, are equivalent. But often enough in American history, one circuit court plays an outsized role in shaping fundamental constitutional issues that ultimately end up before the Supreme Court.

Right now, that judicial spotlight belongs to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which is weighing the fate of a Texas law that would give police officers in the state the power to arrest people suspected of illegally entering the U.S. entered – a The power long believed to rest with the federal government.

It’s a case with far-reaching legal and political implications, and has landed the Fifth Circuit in the middle of a fierce debate over the extent of federal power over national borders.

The Fifth Circuit, based in New Orleans, hears cases from three states – Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana – and the court’s composition was dramatically shaped by President Trump, who appointed six of the seventeen judges. Six of the others were nominated by other Republican presidents.

In recent years, the Fifth Circuit has developed a reputation for muscular conservatism. Many of the justices adhere to “originalism,” which attempts to interpret the Constitution through the lens of its 18th-century authors.

That has led the Fifth Circuit to take a number of positions — such as protecting a violent abuser’s legal access to firearms — that even the Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed skeptical of. Of the nine Fifth Circuit decisions reviewed by the Supreme Court last term, seven were reversed.

Yet the Fifth Circuit’s growing role in handling cases before the Supreme Court is undeniable. The number of Fifth Circuit cases heard by the nation’s highest court more than tripled during the Trump administration. And the fact that it hears appeals from federal district courts in Texas means the Fifth Circuit will likely remain very busy as the state’s governor and attorney general continue to mount legal challenges to federal authority over immigration and the border.

Brad Coe, the sheriff in Kinney County along the Texas border, woke up Wednesday with one destination in mind: Gov. Greg Abbott’s office.

Sheriff Coe is the lead law enforcement authority in a largely rural county that has embraced the state’s effort to stem the sharp increase in migrants from Mexico. He said he was done with the many confusing legal orders issued on the law in the past 24 hours.

He wanted to hear it from Governor Abbott himself. “I’m on my way to his office now,” he said.

He summarized the conflicting guidance on whether his department had the legal authority to arrest migrants who entered the country illegally under the terms of the new law.

The Supreme Court ruled ‘yes, we can’ he said, referring to Tuesday’s decision. “But a lower court said, no, we can’t do that. The Supreme Court is believed to be the highest court in the land. Something is wrong.”

Police departments across Texas, both near and far from the border, expressed confusion about how to proceed after the Supreme Court briefly allowed the new law to take effect Tuesday — only to have it halted again by an appeals court.

On Wednesday morning, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit heard more arguments from both state and federal governments on whether it should go into effect. Many police forces said they would pay close attention to the panel’s ruling before unveiling their plans.

The bill, known as Senate Bill 4, would make it a state crime to enter Texas from Mexico anywhere other than through a legal port of entry. The first arrest would be considered a misdemeanor and then a misdemeanor.

State police have not provided any public indication of how or when they would begin enforcing the law if it eventually takes effect. Abril Luna, a spokeswoman for police in Brownsville, on the border, said that regardless of the ruling, she did not expect daily operations to change dramatically. “If the law is passed, it will obviously be enforced, just like all other laws in Texas,” Ms. Luna said.

Jodi Silva, a spokeswoman for police in Houston, Texas’ largest city, said they too would decide what action to take after a new court order is issued. “We are also monitoring and seeing which way we go,” Ms. Silva said.

In San Antonio, Javier Salazar, the sheriff of Bexar County, which includes that city, has issued a policy manual directing his deputies to enforce the law without engaging in racial profiling, which many critics of the law say would happen if the state and local police are trying to determine who may have entered the country illegally. Officers who make arrests will base them “on probable cause supporting the elements of the crime and not on national origin, immigration status, ethnicity or race,” the report said.

Back in Kinney County, Chief Coe, whose office employs six deputies, said the long list of aggressive border security measures Mr. Abbott has adopted in recent months, including placing concertina wire along the Rio Grande and a heavily armed law enforcement presence on parts of the border, appears to have deterred people from crossing the border. Last year, his deputies arrested up to 20 migrants a day. More recently, he said, “we’re lucky if we get a maximum of two or three a day.”

He said he hoped SB 4 would pass, not because he wants to arrest migrants, but because it would act as a deterrent. “People wouldn’t come anymore because it’s against the law,” he said.

The nation’s most aggressive state-level immigration law took effect in Texas on Tuesday after the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily sided with Gov. Greg Abbott in his increasingly bitter confrontation with the Biden administration over border policy.

The law makes it a crime for migrants to enter Texas from Mexico without permission, and creates a process for state courts to order migrants accused of violating the law to return to Mexico, regardless of their national origin.

The Supreme Court ruled that the law could take effect temporarily while a federal appeals court continues to consider whether to overrule a lower court ruling that found the Texas measure unconstitutional on several grounds.

“A huge victory,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement. Mr. Abbott, the governor, sounded a more cautious note on the Supreme Court’s decision, describing it as “a positive development.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said it would hold oral arguments Wednesday morning on whether the lower court’s order blocking the law should remain in effect while the full appeal is underway.

The sudden authorization to put the law into effect seemed to catch Texas officials off guard. As of Tuesday evening, no date had been set for enforcement to begin. Two state officials said the timing was still being discussed and arrests could begin within days.

By allowing arrests in Texas, even temporarily, the Supreme Court has injected a new element of uncertainty into what was already a divisive national debate over immigration, leaving the issue at the center of the 2024 race between President Biden and former President Donald .J. Trump.

Now, the fate of a migrant arriving in Texas could be very different from that of someone arriving in New Mexico or Arizona.

Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said the Biden administration disagreed with the court ruling and that the new law would “sow chaos and confusion at our southern border.”

In a statement, the Mexican government said it “categorically” rejects any law that allows state or local authorities in the United States to “arrest and return nationals or foreigners to Mexican territory” and that it would not accept deportations by Texas.

When the Supreme Court ruling came down, National Guard troops stationed in the border town of Eagle Pass, as part of Mr. Abbott’s border enforcement efforts, sat in Humvees in a city park taken over by Texas in an effort to prevent border crossings. over there. Other troops patrolled the waters of the Rio Grande near tall fences topped with razor wire.

Until now, they only had the authority to make arrests on private property, with the landowner’s permission. There were few signs along the border Tuesday that the legal landscape had changed.

In any case, there have been few migrant crossings in the area in recent days, officials said, reflecting a sharp overall decline in the number of migrants crossing into the United States from Mexico since a peak in December.

New arrests were expected to be made mainly by Texas Department of Public Safety officials assigned to the border as part of Mr. Abbott’s border program, known as Operation Lone Star.

Texas officials have said in lawsuits and interviews that they would focus their enforcement of the law on single men and women observed by officers crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico. Families would be turned over to U.S. Border Patrol agents, as is current practice.

“Our focus will be more on singles, not families,” said Lt. Christopher Olivarez, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, in an interview before the Supreme Court’s ruling. ‘Single men, single women.’

“That’s how we do it now with criminal violations,” he added.

For more than two years, state troopers in Texas have accused migrants found on private property of criminal trespassing. But the new law would allow them to make arrests anywhere in the state. And any official can enforce the new law, which gives sheriffs, county constables and local police officers far from the border the authority to handle immigration enforcement.

The expansiveness of the law, often called Senate Bill 4 or SB 4, drew sharp criticism from civil rights and immigrant advocacy groups, as well as Texas Democrats. Tempers flared last year during debate over the bill in the state Legislature.

“This is a dangerous day for our democracy,” said Rep. Armando Walle, a Houston Democrat who strongly objected to the bill. “SB 4 will not make our border more secure. It will instead spread fear in our communities.”

Anand Balakrishnan, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, which joined the Biden administration in suing Texas over the law, said the Supreme Court’s decision “destroys the integrity of our nation’s immigration laws and the fundamental principles of a fair process threatens.”

Some county leaders along the border and sheriffs who operate county jails had expressed concern that the new law could lead to their courts and jails being overrun with migrants. A first offense is a crime under the law. A second offense is a misdemeanor.

In a lawsuit filed by Texas as part of the federal case, Victor Escalon, a top leader in the state’s public safety department, said agents would concentrate enforcement in areas near state prisons, which have already been used as prisons for migrants awaiting trial. allegations of violation.

Mr. Olivarez said in the interview before the Supreme Court ruling that any initial rounds of arrests would likely be limited by the capacity of the processing centers in the city of Del Rio and in Jim Hogg County, which were set up to handle misdemeanor arrests. to act. He said each had room for about 100 migrants during the initial court hearing.

Mr. Olivarez pointed to a period last summer when large numbers of migrants crossed the border and state police officers had to limit the number of arrests they could make at any given time. “We made 30 to 40 arrests within the first hour, and then we had to wait the rest of the day because we were almost full,” he said.

Tensions between the federal government and Texas have played out in several lawsuits centered in and around a park in Eagle Pass known as Shelby Park, where state officials have concentrated much of their enforcement efforts.

In January, the state banned Border Patrol agents from accessing the riverfront along the park, although federal agents can still use the boat ramp there.

Federal agents have at times cut the concertina wire, placed by Texas National Guard troops along the riverbank at Eagle Pass, to help migrants trying to climb out of the river. The Supreme Court sided with the federal government in a separate case, saying officers could cut the sharp wire if necessary.

Those tensions were not clearly visible along the river Tuesday afternoon, as federal border agents stood on a pair of U.S. Customs and Border Protection airboats and two smaller Texas National Guard vessels stood nearby.

Farther north along the river, state troopers continued to install new razor wire and fencing to prevent migrants coming ashore, including those who may be seeking legal asylum, from reaching Border Patrol agents and turning themselves in.

Tuesday’s Supreme Court decision allowing Texas to arrest and deport migrants resonated deeply in Arizona, which adopted its own divisive crackdown on illegal immigration more than a decade ago.

Arizona’s effort, which became known as the “show me your papers” law, sparked an outpouring of fear and anger after it passed in 2010 and shook state politics in ways that still resonate today — offering a lesson in what awaits us. Texas.

The law required immigrants to carry immigration documents, and gave police and sheriffs the authority to investigate and detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. It made undocumented immigrants afraid to drive or leave their homes. It led to boycotts and angry protests. A politics resists removed the law’s Republican architect from office. Legal challenges overturned key provisions of the law.

The measure also spurred a new generation of Latino activists to organize, register voters and run for office, creating a political movement that has helped elect Democrats across Arizona and transform a once reliably Republican state in a purple political battlefield.

“It made me realize where I stand in the United States, where my parents stand,” said Valeria Garcia, 21, an undocumented activist who was brought to Arizona from Mexico at age 4 and is now studying political science and cross-border science. studies at Arizona State University. “That was a political awakening.”

Immigration attorneys and immigrant children who grew up under the law, Senate Bill 1070, said it created profound fear and uncertainty in Latino communities across Arizona. Some families hurriedly left the state. Some stopped working.

“It really created a chilling effect across the state,” said Delia Salvatierra, an immigration attorney in Phoenix.

The Supreme Court struck down parts of Arizona law in a 2012 decision that declared the federal government, not the states, had the power to set immigration policy. In 2016, voters in Maricopa County ousted Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the hardline opponent of illegal immigration and a strong supporter of state crackdowns.

With the number of illegal border crossings reaching record levels, Republicans who control the Arizona state legislature have again pushed for strict new measures. Earlier this year they passed the “Arizona Border Invasion Act.” account similar to the Texas law that would have allowed local and state authorities to arrest and deport migrants who enter Arizona illegally. The veto was vetoed by Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat.

Some who lived through the earlier law say the scars are still there. Denise Garcia, born in Phoenix to parents from Chihuahua, Mexico, was still in elementary school when the law went into effect. She vividly remembers how her family changed their routines to hide from authorities and felt afraid to leave the house. She said several immigrant friends from her neighborhood had moved back to Mexico. She said life felt like a haze of fear.

‘Are my parents going to be deported?’ she said. “Will I come home to an empty house?”

The Supreme Court on Tuesday temporarily sided with Texas in its increasingly bitter battle with the Biden administration over immigration policy, putting into effect a sweeping state law that makes it a crime for migrants to enter Texas without permission.

As is usual when the court deals with urgent requests, the order was not motivated. But Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, filed a concurring opinion that appeared to reflect the majority’s premise.

They sent the case back to an appeals court for a quick ruling on whether the law can take effect while an appeal is pending, Judge Barrett wrote. “If a decision is not made soon,” she wrote, “the petitioners may return to this court.”

The court’s three liberal members — Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor — dissented.

“Today the court invites further chaos and crisis in immigration enforcement,” Judge Sotomayor wrote. “Texas passed a law directly regulating the entry and removal of non-citizens and explicitly directing state courts to ignore pending federal immigration proceedings. That law undermines the federal-state balance of power that has existed for more than a century, in which the national government has exclusive authority over the entry and removal of non-citizens.”

The court’s order addressed only one aspect of the clashes between the White House and Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, who has launched a multibillion-dollar campaign to deter migrants, including by erecting razor wire along the banks of the Rio Grande and a barrier of buoys in the river.

The surge in the number of migrants entering the United States has intensified a fraught battle over immigration policy, underscoring deep divisions between and sometimes within political parties. It led to House Republicans’ impeachment of the secretary of Homeland Security and the failure of a bipartisan deal in the Senate to increase border security.

The Texas law, known as SB 4, gives state courts the authority to order the deportation of migrants who enter the state without authorization and gives local law enforcement agencies the authority to arrest those who unlawfully cross the southern border. The administration, civil rights groups and El Paso County have challenged the law, saying it would hamper the federal government’s power to set immigration policy and manage foreign affairs.

In 2012, indoors Arizona v. United States, the Supreme Court approved broad federal power in those areas by a vote of five to three.

“Arizona may have understandable frustrations with the problems caused by illegal immigration” as the federal government tries to address them, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority, “but the state may not pursue policies that undermine federal law.”

The court’s composition has changed since then, and officials in Texas are hopeful that the current justices will change the balance of power between the federal government and the states on immigration.

In a file at the Supreme CourtTexas said its law differed significantly from Arizona’s. But if the justices disagreed, the filing said, “Arizona must be overruled because it violates both statutory and constitutional text, structure, and history.”

Judge David A. Ezrain federal district court in Austin last month has taken an interim measure blocking the Texas law, saying the plaintiffs would likely win for several reasons. “Over a century of Supreme Court cases,” he added, recognized that the Constitution gave the federal government the dominant role in addressing immigration.

Judge Ezra, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, rejected Texas’ argument that its law was authorized by a clause in the Constitution that prohibits states from making war “unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as to require delay is not possible.”

He gave three reasons. According to him, unauthorized immigration is not an invasion. Enforcing state law does not constitute war. And even if both of those things were true, Texas “would have to adhere to federal guidelines.”

Texas asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to block Judge Ezra’s ruling and allow the law to take effect while the appeal is heard. A divided panel of three appeals court judges did so almost immediately, without stating reasons. The appeal will be heard on April 3.

The panel gave the plaintiffs a week to seek relief from the Supreme Court. After the plaintiffs filed an emergency motion, Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., who oversees the Fifth Circuit, extended the appeals court’s brief stay so the justices could consider the case.

In the emergency request from the administrationAttorney General Elizabeth B. Prelogar wrote that the Texas law amounted to “interference with the nation’s ability to speak with one voice in international affairs” and would “significantly harm the United States’ relationship with Mexico.”

She added that the law would “fundamentally disrupt the federal immigration regime, allowing a single state to make unilateral decisions about unlawful entry and removal.”

In answerTexas said it “has the sovereign right to defend itself against violent transnational cartels flooding the state with fentanyl, guns and all forms of brutality.”

In January, another emergency request from the Biden administration was heard by the Supreme Court authorized federal officials to cut or remove portions of a barbed wire fence along the Mexican border that Texas had erected to prevent migrants from entering the state.

But that ruling, by a vote of 5 to 4, was only an interim victory for the government.