The Supreme Court on Tuesday smacked down an emergency request by the Biden administration, claiming states have no authority to legislate on immigration as it's an issue the federal government has sole sovereignty over, opening the doors for local texas law enforcement to arrest migrants at the border.
The conservative-majority court, with three liberal justices dissenting, ruled the law could go into effect while litigation continues in lower courts but still be blocked at a later date, reported NBC News.
"The court gives a green light to a law that will upend the longstanding federal-state balance of power and sow chaos," liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting opinion.
Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson also opposed the decision.
While the majority did not elaborate on its decision, one of the conservative judges, Amy Coney Barrett, wrote a separate note that an appeals court has yet to comment on.
"If a decision is not issued soon, the applicants may return to this court," she wrote.
Her opinion was joined by fellow conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh in a court holding a 6-3 conservative majority, said NBC.
The contentious law, known as SB4, states that police have the power to arrest migrants who illegally cross the border from Mexico with the ability to issue criminal penalties.
It also gives state judges the right to order deportation back to Mexico.
This is just another example in the latest battle between the Biden administration and Texas over immigration enforcement on the US-Mexico border.
The Texas law seemingly conflicts with federal law, emphasizing that "the subject of immigration generally, and the entry and removal of noncitizens particularly, are matters long thought the special province of the federal government," Kagan wrote in a separate opinion.
The law was blocked by a federal judge after the Biden administration sued, however, the New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals declared in a brief order that it could go into effect on March 10 should the Supreme Court decline to intervene.
Justice Samuel Alito initiated a temporary hold on the law on March 4 to give the Supreme Court time to assess the federal government's request.
The law is "flatly inconsistent" with Supreme Court precedent dating back 100 years, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar revealed in court documents.
"Those decisions recognize that the authority to admit and remove noncitizens is a core responsibility of the national government and that where Congress has enacted a law addressing those issues, state law is preempted." she wrote.
According to Prelogar, the appeals court did not explain its reasoning behind the law going into effect, dismissing Texas' argument that the law can be defended under the premise that the state is successfully handling an invasion at the border under the State War Clause of the Constitution. Under the provision, states cannot "engage in war, unless actually invaded" or in imminent danger.
"A surge of unauthorized immigration plainly is not an invasion within the meaning of the State War Clause," Prelogar added.
In defense of the law, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton backed the measure, saying it complements federal law and the state should be allowed to enforce it.
The Constitution "recognizes that Texas has the sovereign right to defend itself from violent transnational cartels that flood the state with fentanyl, weapons, and all manner of brutality."
Texas is "the nation's first-line defense against transnational violence and has been forced to deal with the deadly consequences of the federal government's inability or unwillingness to protect the border," he concluded.
The city of El Paso and two immigrant rights groups, Las Americans Immigrant Advocacy Center and American Getaways, have also countered the law, filing their own emergency request at the Supreme Court, said NBC.
The Supreme Court voided provisions of a tough immigration law legalized in Arizona in 2012. Two of the justices who were part of the majority in that case are still on the court: Chief Justice John Roberts and Sotomayor.
