In the latest showdown over immigration law, the U.S. Department of Justice has threatened to sue the state of Texas if it doesn’t retract a new law that would allow state and local police to arrest migrants who enter the country illegally.
The law, known as Senate Bill 4, was signed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this month and is set to go into effect in March.
In a letter dated Thursday, the DOJ gave Abbott until Jan. 3 to withdraw the state’s intention to enforce the law or face a “lawsuit to enforce the supremacy of federal law and to enjoin the operation of S.B. 4.” The letter cites a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court case over Arizona’s “show me your papers” law, which ruled that the law was unconstitutional and stated that the federal government, not individual states, set immigration policy.
The letter also states that SB 4 conflicts with “various provisions of federal law permitting noncitizens to seek protection from removal to avoid persecution or torture.”
Abbott and other supporters of the state law claim SB 4 is in response to the Biden administration’s handling of immigration and the influx of migrants into the country; while opponents say the law is unconstitutional and could lead to racial profiling and cost border counties millions to jail and prosecute those arrested under the law.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, responding to the DOJ letter, Abbott said he’s never seen “such hostility to the rule of law in America.”
SB 4 also faces other challenges: El Paso County and Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in El Paso are among the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU challenging the legality of a new state law.
Here’s what else has been happening on the immigration front in the region:
Migrant flights
On Wednesday, a flight carrying about 200 migrants from El Paso to New York City was diverted to and landed in Philadelphia because of the weather, several news outlets reported. The passengers were put on buses and driven to New York.
On Dec. 19, 120 migrants in El Paso were put on a plane to Chicago in a flight chartered by the Texas Department of Emergency Management under Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, the Texas Tribune and other media outlets reported.
The flights have been denounced by Democratic lawmakers as well as human rights organizations as political stunts by Abbott, who has repeatedly stated he’s doing what the federal government has failed to do to secure the border.
“We write together, unified in our call for the State of Texas and Governor Greg Abbott to stop politicizing the relocation of migrants and asylum-seekers and take seriously the need to more extensively coordinate efforts between southern border cities, like El Paso, and interior cities, like Chicago,” reads a statement from U.S. Reps. Veronica Escobar of El Paso and Delia C. Ramirez and Jesús “Chuy” García of Illinois.
The flights were not coordinated with the receiving cities, leaving them scrambling to provide services to the migrants.
The legislators urged Abbott to stop wasting time and resources “creating chaos” and instead foster collaboration with the cities to which migrants are transported to humanely resettle them.
The chartered flights to transport migrants are not necessarily new.
In June, about 30 migrants released by Border Patrol agents in El Paso were taken to the Deming Municipal Airport in New Mexico and put on a charter flight to Sacramento. Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis later admitted paying for two flights. DeSantis pulled a similar political stunt in September 2022, sending about 50 migrants from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.
Charter buses
The city and state also continue to bus migrants out of El Paso, sending 414 charter buses to New York City, Chicago, Denver and Philadelphia since September.
The state has paid for the vast majority of those charters, with the city chartering 42 of them using federal funds. In all, more than 18,000 migrants have been bused out of El Paso since September under those charters.
A worker scans the bracelet of a child who will travel to Chicago with his family at Union Depot in El Paso, Wednesday, Oct. 11. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
Since the latest uptick of migrants arriving in El Paso, the county’s Migrant Support Services Center has processed nearly 10,500 people in December. The center helps connect migrants with funds to travel with flights, trains or buses to reach their next destination.
Border wall encampments
The influx of migrants is expected to increase in the coming weeks as groups of up to 5,000 people are making their way to the border.
The El Paso-Juárez area is already seeing large groups of migrants camping out at the banks of the Rio Grande and along the border wall.
Migrants set up makeshift encampments along the border wall in El Paso’s Lower Valley on Wednesday. (Rey R. Jauregui / La Verdad)
At one point, some 250 people were at the border wall by Marker 36 across Riverside High School, and the crowd has fluctuated the past several days, officials with the U.S. Border Patrol El Paso Sector said. On Thursday, some 100 people, including families with young children, waited by the border wall with hopes of having their asylum claims heard, the vast majority of them from Venezuela.
The Border Patrol El Paso Sector has been warning migrants not to listen to “misinformation being circulated by transnational criminal organizations about entering the United States illegally between the ports of entry.”
In a press statement, the agency said migrants encountered at locations between ports of entry, including along the border wall, will be transported to a processing facility and processed under Title 8. That immigration law places migrants who cross the border unlawfully into removal proceedings.
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