Texas lawmakers passed some of the toughest anti-immigrant laws in the United States this week. The Republican majority in the state legislature approved a series of rules that criminalize people crossing the border from Mexico. These make it a crime to enter Texas illegally and allow state authorities to deport them, the legality of which has been questioned by some experts and human rights organizations. Those laws await passage by the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, a politician who has tried radical methods to combat immigrant arrivals, including sending buses carrying immigrants to Democratic cities and installing buoys and barbed wire in the Rio Grande . The politician has already indicated that he will put the initiatives into effect.
House Bill (HB) 4 caused tension in the Legislature for days. The state House of Representatives approved the proposal at 4 a.m. on a Thursday in late October. The Republican majority defeated attempts by Democratic politicians to derail the proposal from Congressman David Spiller, who represents an upstate county. His proposal would allow anyone to be arrested at any time and in any place on suspicion of illegally entering Texas, a state with a population of about 10 million people of Mexican origin.
The Texas Senate also recently approved an initiative allowing Abbott to use an extraordinary $1.5 billion to increase surveillance of the border with Mexico, an area that has seen record numbers of illegal border crossings. The politician said he would use some of the money to expand the state’s immigration wall with Mexico, as well as other barriers that could cut off the flow of arrivals. Abbott is expected to visit the border this weekend alongside Donald Trump, who is campaigning for 2024 on a promise to bring a tough hand back to the region.
The tensions caused by the negotiations over HB 4 were expressed in one viral video captured inside the legislature. After the vote, Democratic Congressman Armando Walle of Houston visibly addressed Republican lawmakers who had voted for the measure. “I can’t drive my brother and my cousin, okay. I can’t take her anywhere, bro? I can’t go to a wedding [wedding]I can’t go to baptism because my church is under attack? You don’t understand, the shit you do is hurting our community,” the congressman can be heard saying in the video. Republicans simply agreed without responding to him.
The new law allows authorities to choose to deport to Mexico people suspected of having entered Texas illegally. If he or she does not leave the United States, he or she could be charged with a new crime, which could result in a prison sentence of between two and 20 years.
The Mexican government expressed its opposition to the measure this week. The Mexican Foreign Ministry released a statement on Wednesday, the same day the Mexican president began a visit to the United States to attend the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (APEC). Criminalizing immigrants, the State Department said, “will lead to family separation, discrimination and racial profiling.” Mexico also opposes a measure that would allow state authorities to detain nationals or foreigners and send them back to Mexican territory, it said the declaration.
The López Obrador government has been in a tug-of-war with its US counterpart over immigration issues for months. That was the focus of the bilateral meeting between Joe Biden and his Mexican counterpart on Friday. The two countries have already reached some agreements at the federal level so that Mexico accepts deported citizens of some countries. However, Mexico has not agreed to accept deportations from individual states or state police.
Human rights organizations have made this clear They will sue the Texas government As soon as Abbott signs this bill. The bill “overwhelms federal law, promotes racial profiling and harassment, and unconstitutionally authorizes local law enforcement to deport people without due process, regardless of whether the immigrants seek asylum or other humanitarian protections,” said Oni Blair, the ACLU’s Texas director. The activist group claims that supremacist groups in the Republican stronghold have shown support for these rules.
Congressman Walle pointed out this week that the law passed by the Texas Legislature is worse than the famous SB1070 passed in Arizona in 2010. This allowed the police to request papers from any person, at any time, to verify their legal status in the territory. That rule was challenged in court and its effects were eroded after several rulings by federal judges. In a landmark case in 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that local police do not have the authority to arrest a suspect based solely on his or her immigration status. The court ruled that this responsibility lies with the federal government. However, the ideological balance of the judges has changed since then.
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