Mexico condemned the new law criminalizing irregular migration in Texas. The package of measures announced by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott this week, known as SB4, allows authorities to question anyone across the state about their immigration status, opening the door for anyone undocumented to be detained or even expelled from the country. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has rejected the law, considered the toughest passed in the United States in decades and set to take effect next March. “We will always be against these measures,” said the president in his press conference this Tuesday.
The controversial state law classifies “illegal entry” into US territory as a criminal offense with prison sentences or express deportation. Gov. Abbott announced in the border town of Brownsville that Texas would begin funding a new wall with Mexico and increase penalties against human trafficking networks, raising the minimum sentence for coyotes or human traffickers from two to 10 years in prison. “Texas is the first and only state in our country’s history to build its own border wall,” the Republican politician boasted shortly before signing the bill into law on Monday.
“Tell our compatriots and migrants that we will defend them, that the governor of Texas is acting this way because he wants to be a candidate for vice president,” López Obrador said. The president said the State Department was already working on a formal response from Mexico and a legal strategy to prevent it from coming into effect. Campaigning in the run-up to next year's election in the United States brought a rise in accusations against Mexico and tough talk against migration, one of the Achilles heels of Joe Biden's administration. “He will lose,” the president added.
Abbott's anti-immigrant stance had already been the subject of controversy south of the border. This year, the governor built a “floating wall” in the Rio Grande with buoys, scoops and devices designed to sink those attempting to swim into U.S. territory. The Biden administration won the legal battle arguing that Texas state authorities did not have the authority to take such actions, and a court ordered the buoys removed in a ruling that was ratified by an appeals court in early December .
López Obrador made a similar argument in the case of the new anti-immigrant law: Texas is going too far and taking measures that only the Biden administration can do, such as border controls. “It usurps functions,” he said. Support from Biden, who is also seeking re-election in 2024, will also be crucial in challenging the measures. On the sidelines of a new legal dispute with Texas, there is talk in Washington that the US president is thinking about tightening his immigration policy in order to counter criticism from conservative circles and increase his chances of remaining in power.
Abbott asserts that the current government's “open door” policy has caused chaos in border states and defends the fight against migration as a last resort. Arizona, for example, has decided in recent days to militarize its border to stem migration flows, despite having a Democratic government there. That same week, entry of trains crossing the borders between the two countries was suspended at two border ports in Texas, also causing diplomatic tensions.
The governor of Texas is advocating a return to the policies of the administration of Donald Trump, the favorite for the Republican presidential nomination. Trump asserted at a rally last weekend that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” in remarks that were described as racist and referred to the arrival of more people from Asia and Africa across the southern border.
López Obrador described the new attack by Abbott, whom he called a “villain” and “lord of evil guts,” as an “inhumane and political” measure. The Mexican president said that the Texas governor “forgets that Texas belonged to Mexico” and that “there are more than 40 million Mexicans in the United States.” According to official data, four out of ten residents of the state are Hispanic. “It won’t work for him,” the Mexican president predicted in the latest episode in a months-long confrontation saga with the most conservative parts of the Republican Party. Mexico will also elect a new president next year.
Subscribe here Subscribe to the EL PAÍS México newsletter and receive all the important information on current events in this country