Nearly a year since Texas passed a law authorizing state and local police officers to arrest illegal migrants entering its territory, Republican lawmakers in at least 11 states have tried to take similar measures, highlighting the importance of immigration to the to exploit the 2024 presidential election.
The fate of the proposals — six have already passed or are currently under consideration, and Louisiana is expected to enact its measure as early as next week — is still being negotiated. In a case before a federal appeals court, Texas is defending its law by arguing that illegal immigration is a form of invasion that allows it to expand its power to protect its borders. Federal courts have previously ruled that, from a constitutional perspective, the definition of “invasion” is limited to military attacks.
States have tested the limits of their power over immigration before, but lawyers and legal scholars said the push this year was accompanied by what amounted to a public relations campaign.
In campaign speeches, political ads and in the halls of Congress, a growing number of Republicans are echoing former President Donald J. Trump, arguing that the surge in migration at the southern border is an “invasion.” President Biden signed an executive order restricting asylum this month amid pressure from both Republicans and Democrats to address problems at the border, and he could take further action next week.
The measure, expected to be signed by Gov. Jeff Landry, Republican of Louisiana, includes provisions allowing Mr. Landry and his attorney general to strike a pact with Texas to govern border security. Mr. Landry has already met with Gov. Greg Abbott, Republican of Texas, and sent soldiers from the Louisiana Army National Guard to the Texas border with Mexico.
Valarie Hodges, the Louisiana state senator who authored the law, joined other Republicans in calling Mr. Biden’s latest measure “too little, too late” and said in an interview that state actions like hers are essential because the Biden -Government failed to enforce immigration laws.
“The federal government is not helping us,” she said. “They did the opposite – they opened the doors and let more people in.”
In the swing state of Arizona, Republican lawmakers this month placed a Texas measure on the ballot in November after her state’s Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, vetoed a similar bill. And in Michigan, another battleground where immigration has greatly energized Mr. Trump’s base, Republican state lawmakers with the far-right Freedom Caucus introduced another measure.
James DeSana, a state representative in Michigan, said he and the bill’s other authors decided to file the bill after visiting Del Rio and Eagle Pass, Texas, even though they believe it is most likely to pass in the state’s Democratic-controlled Legislature will come to a halt.
Mr. DeSana, a Republican who campaigned against “sanctuary cities” when he won his seat in 2022 — taking it away from Democratic control — stressed that he was not opposed to legal immigration or the creation of more temporary legal pathways for workers into the country. But he firmly believed that the situation on the southern border had become an invasion.
“A lot of people end up in the inner cities,” he said in an interview. “We don’t have enough living space. Our police resources are strained. Crimes are being committed.”
Democrats, immigrant rights groups and some legal scholars said the proposals could devastate their states’ economies, lead to racial and ethnic profiling and spread dangerous visions of undocumented immigrants as hostile invaders and aliens. Arizona’s ballot measure has stirred memories of police harassment and anti-immigrant sentiment among young Latinos and immigrant rights activists who have previously successfully resisted such restrictive immigration laws.
In April, Senator Royce Duplessis, a Democrat from New Orleans, in the Louisiana House of Representatives called on lawmakers in his state and across the country to reject statements that conjure up images of undocumented immigrants as “despite the fact that they come from space to come to us.” “To get everyone out of our houses.”
In an interview, he said states with fewer resources were unlikely to do better than the federal government in dealing with immigration, a complex issue that neither party had addressed for years. “It’s more about pushing an ideological agenda than addressing real public safety issues,” he said.
Texas has experimented with expanding the limits of its authority on important issues other than immigration, including abortion and restrictions on gender transition, but its campaign has gained the most traction on immigration.
Mr. Abbott’s busing of migrants to blue cities like New York and Chicago initially drew condemnation from immigrant rights groups and progressives, who argued that he was treating migrants like political pawns — and then raised concerns, including among Democrats, that local and state governments have been unable to handle record levels of migration under the Biden administration.
Proponents of the state measures contend that a 1996 federal law aimed at curbing illegal immigration has strengthened states’ ability to help enforce immigration rules, even though the power to regulate immigration and naturalization rests with Congress. But efforts to expand law enforcement’s authority to enforce immigration laws in recent decades have been largely suppressed by the courts. Federal judges blocked key aspects of immigration laws passed in Arizona in 2010 and South Carolina in 2011, including provisions that require law enforcement officials to check the immigration status of some people during routine stops and require immigrants to carry federal registration documents.
In recent committee hearings and floor debates, Republicans stressed that their descriptions of an invasion of the southern border were accurate, pointing to the flow of fentanyl across the border and cases of human trafficking, murders and sexual assaults by undocumented immigrants.
According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, much of the fentanyl in the United States is smuggled through legal ports of entry, typically by citizens driving across the border, and while the country’s immigrant population has been increasing for decades, crime has also been declining over the period.
In the Texas case before the federal appeals court, Ilya Somin, a professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School in Virginia, argued in an amicus brief on behalf of himself and the Cato Institute, a libertarian research center, that expanding the scope of the law to include illegal immigration in the definition of “invasion” would set a dangerous precedent that would allow states to declare war on foreign powers at any time and would lead to the detention of more people without due process, regardless of their citizenship.
“It violates the text and the original meaning of the constitution” and will have serious consequences, Mr. Somin said in an interview.
Jennifer M. Chacón, a professor at Stanford Law School who focuses on immigration and constitutional law, said the rhetoric in the Texas case stoking fears of immigration invasions has emerged throughout the country’s history and has used harmful racial and ethnic tropes and bigotry.
“An invasion involves an armed group acting as one to carry out an act of war and deserving a response. “That’s not what it is,” she said, citing increasing immigration worldwide. “This is a multinational group of men, women and children who are fleeing for a variety of reasons.”
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2024-06-16 01:58:29
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