WASHINGTON(December 19, 2023)—Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) approved a bill on Monday allowing police to arrest migrants who have illegally crossed the U.S. border.
For more context on the matter, please consider Cori Alonso-Yoder, Associate Professor of Fundamentals of Lawyering at the George Washington University Law School. She is a nationally recognized scholar on immigration legislation and the impacts of state, local, and federal law on immigrant communities.
Alonso-Yoder is quoted on the matter saying, “The Texas law is almost certainly unconstitutional under Supreme Court precedent that places the responsibility for immigration enforcement under the powers of the federal government. But, Texas lawmakers and Governor Abbott are betting that the current, more conservative makeup of the Court could lead to a different result. As with abortion, if the Court looks to historical precedents at the time of the country's founding, the justices would likely struggle to find examples of the federal government enforcing immigration restrictions. The implications are staggering: would Florida and Texas have a different immigration system than New York and California?
The Court had an opportunity to address this question more directly in a case earlier this year where Texas and Louisiana challenged the Biden Administration's immigration enforcement priorities. In the end, the Court sided with the federal government in an 8-1 ruling that the states had no legal standing to bring the claim. That case, United States v. Texas, may be our best indication at the moment of which way the Court would fall in a challenge to the new Texas law.”
To reach Professor Cori Alonso-Yoder, please contact media relations specialist Shannon Mitchell at [email protected].
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