Supreme Court lets Texas detain and jail migrants under SB4 immigration law as legal battle continues
The Supreme Court on Tuesday gave Texas officials permission to jail and prosecute migrants suspected of crossing the U.S. southern border without authorization, greenlighting the enforcement of a state immigration law known as SB4 that the Biden administration has called unconstitutional.
Denying a request from the Justice Department, the high court allowed the controversial Texas law, one of Gov. Greg Abbott's signature immigration policies, to take effect while the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit considers the measure's legality.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-texas-sb4-immigration-law/
Huge decision. It was a 6-3 split along predictable lines which is a good sign for what they think on the merits.
The Texas law mirrors existing federal law, which means the feds couldn't argue that Texas is going against federal law. The only difference is that Texas is willing to enforce it.
The federal government is actually in a tough legal position on this, because they don't want to argue that states cannot choose to enforce a law If the federal government has a similar law on the books but has not prosecuted. There are tons of actions that violate both state and federal law, and as long as state law does not contradict federal law, prosecutions have always been permitted to proceed in parallel.
