HARRIS COUNTY, Texas — Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo this week sent a letter to President Joe Biden calling on him to stop a controversial border security bill that recently passed through the Texas Legislature.
Texas lawmakers earlier this month gave final approval to Senate Bill 4, which would allow police to arrest migrants who enter the country illegally and let local judges order them to leave the country.
The bill, which Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is expected to sign, would become one of the nation’s strictest immigration laws if allowed to take effect.
“In practice, SB 4 will allow — and sometimes require — judges across the entire state of Texas to deport people, even if they are in the process of seeking asylum. Police officers, whose effectiveness depends on close ties with their local communities, will now be in charge of detaining immigration for deportation.”
“The Texas law is, as currently constituted, the one that makes it a crime to illegally cross into Texas is a direct affront, a direct challenge to longtime existing federal law and Supreme Court precedent,” Deep Gulasekaram, a law professor at the University of Colorado, recently told Spectrum News 1.
One of the Republicans who carried the bill, state Rep. David Spiller, said the law would not apply to residents who have been in the country for more than two years. He defended the bill as having sufficient guardrails and said it would mostly be applied near the border.
“This is not, ‘Round up everyone who is here illegally and ship them back to Mexico,’” Spiller told a legislative committee.
Steven McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, told lawmakers it would be “almost impossible” for the law to be enforced in any county that was not directly along Texas’ 1,200-mile border with Mexico, because an officer would need evidence that a migrant had crossed illegally.
Still, Hidalgo said the federal government needs to remain in charge of immigration enforcement and characterized SB 4 as the weaponization of immigration for political gain.
“Immigration, as an issue, is easy to weaponize for political reasons. Throughout history, politicians have exploited fear of the ‘other’ for political gain. But effective solutions will not be borne by dangerous political posturing,” she wrote.