By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) -Texas authorities may not enforce a Republican-backed state law that would let them arrest and prosecute people suspected of illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, a divided federal appeals court ruled late Thursday.
A 2-1 panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an injunction that blocked enforcement of the disputed law, which former Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration had gone to court to challenge.
Republican President Donald Trump’s administration dropped the federal government’s case, but Texas’s law known as SB4 had continued to be challenged by, among others, the immigrant rights group Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, which argued federal law preempted the state’s.
The law, which Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed in December 2023, would make it a state crime to illegally enter or re-enter Texas from a foreign country and would empower state judges to order that violators leave the United States, with prison sentences up to 20 years for those who refuse to comply.
U.S. Circuit Judge Priscilla Richman, writing for the New Orleans-based court’s majority, said that for nearly 150 years, the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that the power to control immigration was exclusively a federal power.
Relying on a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down parts of an Arizona immigration law, she said the Texas law, if allowed to be enforced by the Texas Department of Public Safety, would interfere with the federal government’s ability to enforce complex U.S. immigration laws.
The state did not respond to requests for comment.
The ruling upheld a lower-court judge’s February 2024 preliminary injunction. The U.S. Supreme Court a month later briefly allowed the law to take effect, but the 5th Circuit within hours halted it pending further review.
The opinion by Richman, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, was joined by U.S. Circuit Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez, a Biden appointee.
U.S. Circuit Judge Andrew Oldham, a Trump appointee, dissented. He said the majority treated as irrelevant that Trump has been encouraging states to aid his administration’s efforts to ramp up immigration enforcement.
“It is a sad day for the millions of Americans who are concerned about illegal immigration and who voiced those concerns at ballot boxes across Texas and the Nation,” Oldham wrote.
Cody Wofsy, a lawyer for the plaintiffs at the American Civil Liberties Union, in a statement welcomed the ruling, saying state immigration laws like the one Texas adopted have been repeatedly rejected by courts and “are deeply harmful to our communities.”
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
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