U.S. Supreme Court allows Texas to begin enforcing controversial immigration law

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for Texas to immediately begin enforcing a controversial immigration law that allows state officials to arrest and detain people they suspect of entering the country illegally.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for Texas to immediately begin enforcing a controversial immigration law that allows state officials to arrest and detain people they suspect of entering the country illegally.

The court’s three liberals dissented.

Legal challenges to the law are ongoing at a federal appeals court, but the decision hands a significant – yet temporary – win to Texas, which has been battling the Biden administration over immigration policy.

The court had been blocking the law from taking effect, issuing an indefinite pause on the proceedings a day earlier, which was wiped away by Tuesday’s order.

Senate Bill 4, signed into law by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in December, makes entering Texas illegally a state crime and allows state judges to order immigrants to be deported. Immigration enforcement, generally, is a function of the federal government.

The law immediately raised concerns among immigration advocates of increased racial profiling as well as detentions and attempted deportations by state authorities in Texas, where Latinos represent 40 per cent of the population.

A federal judge in Austin had blocked the state government from implementing the law. But the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals granted a temporary stay of the lower court’s decision and said the law would take effect on March 10 if the Supreme Court didn’t act. A pair of emergency appeals from the Biden administration and others soon followed.