Federal Judge Blocks Sweeping New Immigration Law in Texas

Follow our live coverage of the Texas immigration law.

A federal court in Austin on Thursday blocked a Texas law that would allow state and local police officers to arrest migrants who cross from Mexico without authorization, siding with the federal government in a legal showdown over immigration enforcement.

The ruling, by Judge David A. Ezra of the Western District of Texas, was a victory for the Biden administration, which had argued that the new state law violated federal statutes and the U.S. Constitution.

The Texas law had been set to go into effect on March 5; it will now be put on hold while a federal lawsuit to overturn the law moves forward. In granting a preliminary injunction on Thursday, Judge Ezra, who was appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan, said that the federal government was likely to eventually win the case on the merits.

“No matter how emphatic Texas’s criticism of the federal government’s handling of immigration on the border may be to some,” Judge Ezra wrote in his 114-page decision, “disagreement with the federal government’s immigration policy does not justify a violation of the Supremacy Clause” of the Constitution.

He said that, among the many legal problems presented by the Texas law, it would “moot many asylum applications” and “seriously harm” relations with Mexico. He said the provision of the law allowing state judges to order the removal of noncitizens is “patently unconstitutional.”

Gov. Greg Abbott, who has moved aggressively over the past three years to create a state-level system of border enforcement, said he would immediately appeal the decision.