(The Lion) — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is prepared to take an immigration battle to the Supreme Court, his office told The Lion, after a federal appeals court blocked a state law that would allow Texas officials to arrest and deport migrants.
The law, Senate Bill 4, was enacted by the state during former President Joe Biden’s time in office, when illegal border crossings reached record highs. Aiming to make illegal entry a state crime, Abbott argued state intervention was necessary during “President Biden’s border crisis” and said Biden was failing to “fulfill his duty to protect our state from the invasion at our southern border.”
In response to the ruling, the Trump White House slammed the Biden administration’s border policies and told The Lion the border is now “more secure than ever before.”
“Unlike the Biden administration, which allowed an endless flow of unvetted illegal aliens to cross our border, President Trump is committed to keeping these dangerous criminal illegal aliens out of our country,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told The Lion. “Under his leadership, the border is more secure than ever before – with zero illegal aliens being released into the country over the last two months.”
Texas’s law has been in judicial limbo for months, after immigration advocates and the Biden Justice Department challenged it, arguing that immigration enforcement falls under the exclusive authority of the federal government. Although the Justice Department dropped its lawsuit after President Trump took office, the case continued under the challenge from advocacy groups. A divided Fifth Circuit panel upheld a lower court injunction last week, keeping Texas’ law blocked.
“For nearly 150 years, the Supreme Court has recognized that the power to control immigration – the entry, admission, and removal of aliens – is exclusively a federal power,” Judge Priscilla Richman, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, wrote for the 2-1 majority. “Despite this fundamental axiom, S.B. 4 creates separate, distinct state criminal offenses for unauthorized entry and reentry of aliens into Texas from a foreign nation, and it provides procedures for their removal.”
The advocacy groups that sued praised the decision, calling it a “major win for immigrant rights.” Yet Texas officials have vowed to appeal, insisting the state has a right to defend its border.
“This injunction didn’t halt Texas’s pre-existing authority to arrest for criminal trespass and other violations of state criminal law. Working alongside the Trump administration, Texas will continue to utilize every tool and strategy to arrest, detain, and deport illegal immigrants,” Abbott Press Secretary Andrew Mahaleris said in a statement to The Lion. “Governor Abbott is prepared to take this fight to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Texas will not back down from upholding its constitutional authority to defend its sovereign territory.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called the decision “blatantly wrong” and vowed to “fight to protect the rule of law,” noting “Texas has every right to protect public safety.”
In a blistering dissent, Trump-appointed Judge Andrew Oldham said the majority’s decision “usurps the State of Texas’s sovereign right to police its border and to battle illegal immigration.”
Citing Biden’s 2024 admission that the country was dealing with an immigration “crisis,” Oldham noted, “From 2021 to 2024, millions upon millions of aliens illegally streamed across the U.S.-Mexico border.”
“Today is a sad day for Texas and for our court,” he added. “It is a sad day for the millions of Americans who are concerned about illegal immigration and who voiced those concerns at ballot boxes across Texas and the Nation – only to have their voices muted by federal judges.”
