The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Texas Senate Bill 4, which authorizes state authorities to arrest and deport individuals suspected of illegal border crossing, is not preempted by federal immigration law. The court determined that the re-entry prohibition in Senate Bill 4 merely mirrors federal law and does not conflict with it, as states may adopt complementary legislation that reinforces federal policy objectives. This ruling establishes that states can supplement federal immigration enforcement when federal authorities are not acting, based on the principle that field preemption only applies when Congress has legislated so comprehensively that it leaves no room for supplementary state legislation.
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Court Rules Texas can ARREST and DEPORT Immediately!Added:
Texas wins the border fight. They had a new law that was passed that said that they can arrest and deport illegal aliens since previously the Biden administration was not doing that at all. In fact, prohibiting them from doing that. We had thousands of Haitians living under a bridge and they said you have to take them Texas and they started to pile in. But now, as we see here from Reuters and over from the fifth circuit court of appeals in a very short order saying that now the process can continue. We saw here was a drone shot of migrants on the US side of the Rio Grand. And that's like a small little encampment, man. There used to be remember those Haitians coming over and they blamed the border patrol agent for whipping them with his lariat as they were invading America. Well, turns out now Texas prevails. A federal appeals court ruled and cleared the way for Texas authorities to enforce key parts of a law that would allow state officials to arrest and deport people if you're suspected of illegally crossing the border. It was a 2 to1 panel and a lot of this was situated around the supremacy clause and preeemption by the federal government against the state.
The borders are generally federal purview. It's their jurisdiction and the states kind of just follow their lead.
But Texas said enough already. We can't keep letting our state get invaded. And so what happened at the lower level is a US district judge called David Ezra stopped the Texas law from going into effect saying the state law was impinging upon federal government's longheld power to control immigration.
But what's so interesting about this is the federal government responded in their amicus brief seen here that we'll take a look at saying it's not impinging upon us at all. It's in alignment with what we're doing. They're trying to effectuate border security. But here, of course, Ken Paxton, who's now running for the US Senate, who beat the crap out of John Cornin, another squishy Republican, quickly appealed this and brought it up. The group representing the plaintiffs as usual, the ACLU, the Texas Civil Rights Project, in a joint statement said, "This is disappointing and we're going to fight against this."
Paxton didn't respond to a request for comment. The lawsuit had been filed to stop the 2023 law from going into effect after the Court of Appeals in April overturned an earlier injunction. and Joe Biden wasn't doing anything. But then they would come in and say, "We preempt you." Texas says, "We're being invaded. Can you help us, federal government?" "No, we can't. There's nothing we can do." Then you got guys like Langford who came out, the senator from Oklahoma, and he's like, "Yeah, there's nothing we can do. We have to take 5,000 every day." And only if it gets to 6,500, then we'll come in and we'll actually try to stop it. Trump comes in on day one. He's like, "It's over. Don't even think about it." That's all it took. Trump's administration had dropped the case in another fight. The new ACLU backed lawsuit sought to address that issue by instead suing on behalf of non-citizens.
It's amazing. So foreigners get to break in and then they get the ACLU come racing to their defense to file lawsuits on their behalf to say you're violating our rights. It's insane. It's like a robber breaking into your house and then suing you to say it's my house now.
You're calling the cops. How dare you violate my civil liberties. Those provisions include one that makes it a state crime for someone to re-enter after deportation even if they have federal permission to do so or have gotten a green card and other things.
And so ultimately we'll look into the nuts and bolts of how he got here just so we can understand the legal maneuvering. But this is the decision to drop that they're very upset about. Case was LML in essentially a class action and KGS on behalf of themselves and all those similarly situated. So, illegal aliens, you can't even use their own names, filing under their initials, suing the director of Texas DPS. They said, "It is now ordered that appellants opposed motion for a stay of the lower level injunction." The lower level's district court judge said the state cannot enforce this new law, which Texas passed to protect their territorial sovereignty. Said you can't have that law go into effect, issued an injunction. So, then Ken Paxton appealed it. Said, "I would like to stay that injunction." And the fifth circuit just said granted, that injunction is now stayed. This one loser judge called Southwick would deny the motion and continue the prohibition against enforcement of the law. But here's what the DOJ said in support of this. They wrote, "All right, listen, judge." In the fifth circuit, the ACLU gang bang loving lawyers are saying that we have supremacy over state immigration law and therefore Texas's immigration law is in opposite. It's contradictory. It is not as supreme as your federal law. So therefore it is invalid. They said yeah well we are responsible for immigration and so we have an interest in making sure you understand what actual preeemption is and applied in a manner that makes sure that we do have our constitutional authority protected but also preserve the ability of states to adopt complimentary legislation that advances federal policy. And so we've been very happy to see that the president was able to by executive order and just policy change able to stop the flood at the border. That's maybe his most incredible accomplishment of this term is to stop the flood, stop the invasion. But we've also had some concerns that the Congress is useless and John Thun and others are still worried about January 6 so much that they can't actually codify any of these things. The benefit of this is that now we're getting some law on the books to say that states now according to the fifth circuit apparently are entertaining the argument that states can adopt complimentary legislation.
Okay? So if the federal government won't codify it, states go do it. Texas, pass these laws, pass these bills. And now the administration is setting this in stone as case precedent to say that's allowed. We're happy with that. The United States submits this amicus brief in support. Now, here's what they write.
This case concerns whether the state of Texas, exercising its historic and sovereign police powers, can legislatively protect its citizens from a surge of illegal aliens in response to an unprecedented border crisis and a declared invasion. And that's what it is. It wasn't just migration or immigration. We've got rules and mechanisms for that. Go to a port of entry. Go apply. Go make your argument that you're a TPSer or a refugee or whatever, but don't just come across the border in gigantic hordes. The day he took office, this is the DOJ speaking.
Trump issued proclamation 1088 and it said that what we're doing is redressing the invasion at the border. It has a jarring human toll. And it is. It's brutal. We got babies being left in rivers. We've got women being attacked and abused in multiple varieties. We've got humans being trafficked. We saw Kilmore wife beating ago Garcia, throwing a bunch of people in the back of his vehicle that wasn't even his when he was driving on a suspended license and without registration or insurance across the country, packing these people into vehicles like sardines. So, prior to January 20, 2025, however, Texas was left to fend for itself. So, it enacted a bill called Senate Bill 4 as an exercise of quote historic sovereign police powers to actually protect their citizens. That law makes it a state crime for an alien to enter, attempt to enter, or be found in Texas after having re-entered the US in violation of the INA, the Immigration and Nationality Act, which prohibits illegal re-entry.
Now, although the bill and the re-entry prohibition mirrors the federal law, the district court facially enjoined its enforcement. The feds are saying it's the same thing. That's our law. They just took that. They're using it. Great.
But the judge said, "Sorry, that's in conflict. You can't make immigration laws. You can't protect your own citizens because that's the federal government's job. And when the federal government won't do anything about it, that's your problem. Nothing you can do.
Eat it." Now, the Supreme Court has made clear that field preeemption arises only in the rare case where Congress has legislated so comprehensively in a particular field that it left no room for supplementary state legislation.
It's got to be so exclusive that you can't do anything to even assist. Now, the prohibition at the federal level on unauthorized re-entry does not foreclose that kind of complimentary state legislation at all. And a brooding federal interest in the treatment of illegal aliens has no preemptive effect at all. Now, the bill is also not preempted as a conflict. The re-entry prohibition tracks federal law. No different from a state criminal law that borrows from a federal law to punish the same wrongdoing. It's the same thing.
Senate Bill 4 merely adds a state level punishment for what federal law already prescribes. It's already illegal. At a minimum, Senate Bill 4 from Texas does not conflict with federal law in all of its applications. And so, the court should grant a stay, and they did. Now, here's more. The supremacy clause provides that the Constitution, federal law, and treaties are the supreme law of the land. Constitution article 6 clause 2. Its command is simple. If a state law and federal law conflict, the federal law wins. In all cases, preeemption must stem from either the Constitution itself or a valid law by Congress. There is no federal preeemption in a vacuum. But the district court said, "Yes, there is.
Sorry, you can't do this. You have to let the invasion continue." Neither of those theories have any merit at all.
The bill in Texas and the re-entry provision is not field preempted. That theory of preeemption applies only in rare cases when Congress has legislated so extensively that you can't add anything to it. And that hasn't happened here. The regulation of those unlawfully present in the US is not one of those rare areas where Congress intended to occupy the field to the exclusion of state legislation that supplements and reinforces federal law. It's our entire jurisdiction. There's nothing you can do. The prohibition on re-entry is contained in a single statutory subsection in a single sentence in 8 US Code 1326A. Its prohibitions are not complex, nor does it contain carefully crafted exceptions. And so these prohibitions are not the kind of comprehensive regulatory scheme that evinces a clear and manifest purpose and ousters any other complimentary state rules. If they were, then virtually any federal prohibition would give rise to field preeemption and the Supreme Court directive would be an empty promise. In fact, they decided this back in 2012 in Arizona versus United States. That doesn't support what's happening here.
In that case, they applied a decades old precedent. And following that precedent, the court held that Arizona and their registration scheme was field preempted.
And in addition to those requirements, the INA's registration provisions authorize special regulations and forms and fingerprinting and other things. And there's a bunch of things that that law ultimately governs. And so that is far more complex. So when it comes to alien registration, they were in Congress writing a whole bunch of rules here.
That didn't happen as it relates to illegal re-entry. And none of the reasons offered by the district court alter this conclusion at all. The district court said that the bill is field preempted because the federal government has a dominant interest in immigration. But that's too expansive.
There is no field preeemption of all of immigration law. Otherwise, the Supreme Court in the Arizona case would have been much easier. They just would have said, "Oh, nope. This is a law that pertains to immigration. The entire arena of immigration is preempted by the feds, and so therefore, you can't do anything related to that at The court could have simply declared that, but they didn't. Instead, the court analyzed the specific field of alien registration and said, "Okay, it's very complicated."
And so, they've got a whole governing structure around that issue, so therefore, you can't do that. But here, this lower level judge did not purport to explain how the regulation is sufficiently comprehensive. All it said was there are other statutes that address other issues. And so, it's his judge essentially, as it sounds like, there was some immigration law at the federal level, which means you can have zero at the state level. It needs to be grounded though in the structure and the statute at issue. You can't just say broad preeemption otherwise the Supreme Court in Arizona would have written their whole opinion differently. The logic leads to this conclusion. Now similarly there's no conflict here. A state law may conflict with federal law where the challenge law stands as an optical to the accomplishment of what Congress passed. Same thing. You have to analyze it by the statute and it does not justify a freewheeling judicial inquiry into whether a state law is intention with the federal law that would undercut the principle. Senate 4 bill in Texas doesn't conflict anyways.
It does not authorize any conduct that is forbidden by federal law. It uses language borrowed nearly verbatim by federal law to prohibit conduct that parallels conduct prohibited by the INA.
They ban it at the fed level. We're banning it here. It's the same essential operation. As the court recognized, the re-entry prohibition tracks federal law.
Now, the mere fact that the state bill overlaps with federal law doesn't even start the problem. States are free to criminalize conduct also proscribed any legal by Congress, and they can attach additional penalties to those. No one would doubt that states may adopt elements of a federal criminal offense as their own and attach penalties for those violations, like if it's a felon possessing a firearm, for example. Laws targeting illegal immigration are no exception. The Supreme Court has said this explicitly. Quote, "Despite the exclusive federal control of this nation's borders, we cannot conclude that the states are without any power to deter the influx of persons entering to the United States against federal law and whose numbers might have a discernable impact on traditional state concerns. So, if the Congress won't codify Trump's immigration changes, now we're starting to see the states flesh this out in the legal case precedent.
and the fifth circuit is now on the side of the states can act and supplement.
The district court objected to this bill in Texas because it creates foreign policy concerns and the secretary of state might be mad about it and it directly harms the United States relationship with Mexico. Who cares?
That is not a basis for finding that this bill's re-entry prohibition is preempted. They probably would also like it. their cartels who run large parts of it would also probably be, you know, happier with uh maybe lower drug penalties or lower trafficking penalties. We don't care. We have a nation to enforce. Texas has its own sovereign rights. We have the 10th Amendment and states, it's the United States of America. We want states to help protect themselves. That is not a basis for finding that this re-entry prohibition conflict was preempted.
After all, any application of criminal law, there you go. to illegal aliens may affect sensitive foreign policy matters, but implied preeemption must be grounded in the text and structure of the law.
And a brooding federal interest is never enough to win preeemption of a state law. And so that's from the DOJ. Very nice filing. The court should enter a stay pending appeal. And of course, they've now done that. So I like where this is going. Okay. If we can't get it done in Congress because we've got John Thun the Goon and Tom Tillis who's obsessed obsessed with January 6.
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