A coalition of 22 Republican state attorneys general support a Texas law that makes illegal immigration a state crime and authorizes state officials to enforce the law.
Texas’s state law, SB4, makes illegal immigration into Texas a state crime and allows state magistrates and judges to order individuals who cross the border illegally back to the country from which they entered. The U.S. government and private plaintiffs filed suit over the law. A U.S. District Court blocked the law, and the case is currently before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
“The immigration crisis has rendered every state a border state, and I swore an oath to safeguard Virginians,” Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares said. “Communities are hurting and people are scared, yet any potential solution to this public safety travesty has been blocked or ignored. When will enough be enough?”
The amicus brief filed by the states in support of Texas’s law argues: “States also bear an obligation to their citizens to address the attendant public crisis. That obligation implicates one of Amici States’ core sovereign prerogatives—enacting legislation pursuant to their police powers to protect their citizens’ safety…Relatedly, Amici States have a paramount interest in ensuring that their validly enacted state laws are not improperly held unconstitutional under incorrect preemption analyses.”
The amicus brief was filed by attorneys general in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming on the amicus brief.
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Rebecca Barnabi
