For well more than a century, the federal government has enjoyed near exclusive authority over immigration policy, while states have largely been restricted to assisting in carrying out federal policies. The Supreme Court has reinforced this rule many times over many decisions, such as Truax v. Raich (1915), which said that “the authority to control immigration — to admit or exclude aliens — is vested solely in the Federal Government.”
Texas, however, now wants the Supreme Court to abandon this longstanding constitutional rule, and it thinks that the political tumblers have finally aligned in a way that would lead the Court to do just that.
Texas seeks to upend the longstanding balance of power between the federal government and the states through a law, known as SB 4, which allows Texas state courts to issue deportation orders that will be carried out by Texas state officials. The law is now before the Supreme Court in two “shadow docket” cases, known as United States v. Texas and Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy v. McCraw.
The Texas law will go into effect on Wednesday at 5 pm, unless the Supreme Court acts, so it is likely that the Court will hand down some sort of decision before then (although that decision could just be a brief order extending the deadline to some future date).
The Supreme Court is as conservative as it’s been since the 1930s, with Republicans controlling six seats on the nine-justice Court. And Texas’s case attempting to seize control of the Texas/Mexico border arrives at the justices’ feet at the same time that an unusually large wave of migrants are arriving at the border.
The reason why the federal government has historically had exclusive authority over nearly all questions of immigration policy is to prevent a single state’s mistreatment of a foreign national from damaging US relations with another nation. Indeed, Hines v. Davidowitz (1941) warned that “international controversies of the gravest moment,…
Read the full article here
