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The last two times Republicans have pushed legislation targeting illegal immigrants in border states, the backlash has flipped the states blue and purple.
But in red-hot Texas?
As a federal appeals court on Wednesday considers a legal challenge to a controversial Texas law targeting immigrants, Marisa Limón Garza, who fought against California’s anti-immigration laws in the 1990s, He sees a historic moment unfolding, not unlike the “Show Me Yours” protests in Arizona. The “paper” method of the 2010s.
“I don’t have rose-colored glasses, but I look at history, like California’s Prop 187 and Arizona’s SB1070, and look at short-term policies,” said Limón Garza, executive director of the Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center. “We’re looking at states that have been hit hard.” The group is one of several plaintiffs suing Texas over the law known as Senate Bill 4. “But it was the people who changed those states.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans was scheduled to hear oral arguments Wednesday in a Justice Department lawsuit that argues Texas’ SB 4 is unconstitutional.
The lawsuit comes in conjunction with a legal challenge by El Paso County and the Las Americas Immigration Advocacy Center, which says immigration is the sole purview of the federal government. Texas argues that the federal government has been negligent in its border security and that the state has the right to conduct its own border security.
Although it has not yet taken effect because of a court injunction, SB 4 is mobilizing Texas’ immigrant communities in an unprecedented way, said Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Human Rights Network. The El Paso, Texas, nonprofit joined an effort to unite her 50 organizations in Texas called the We Will Resist Campaign Coalition. Members were scheduled to protest outside the New Orleans courthouse on Wednesday.
“This is an extreme version of what we’ve seen in the past in Arizona,” Garcia said. Under SB4, ”The Texas Department of Public Safety will be asking questions about immigration and arrests of people. It is sending shockwaves of fear through our community. ”
more:SB 1070 inspired a generation of Latinos to run for office and participate in politics
Are hardline policies changing the immigration debate?
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has installed razor wire and floating barriers on the Rio Grande, sent the National Guard to the border, targeted illegal immigrants for human trafficking allegations against migrant shelters, and now Texas A new law was enacted. Crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas is a crime, allowing the state to order deportation.
As a result, it’s debatable whether the political winds in Texas could shift as they have in California and Arizona.
SB 4 may have galvanized activists like Limón Garza, who say they want to protect immigrant families in Texas and prevent communities of color from being disproportionately targeted. But this hard-line border enforcement policy has also proven popular with many Texas voters, who are majority Hispanic border residents.
Selene Rodriguez runs the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation’s “Secure and Sovereign Texas” campaign, which supports SB 4. She comes from a ranching community near Del Rio, Texas, on the U.S.-Mexico border. Like Limón Garza, she traces her family’s roots to Mexico. But she doesn’t believe the resistance to SB 4 will be anything like what happened in California and Arizona, much less.
“As always, there are differences of opinion,” Rodriguez said. “But I see more people, especially in the Hispanic community, calling for stricter immigration laws. My community is tired of human smuggling attempts.
“Texas is a huge supporter of legal and safe immigration. The last thing we want is for the millions of people who come here illegally to find themselves in the hands of Mexican cartels. ”
more:How SB 1070 helped pave the way for Donald Trump’s presidency
Texas’ SB 4 is different than California’s Prop 187
In 1994, amid economic downturn and fears about globalization, the California Republican Party, led by Governor Pete Wilson, promoted Proposition 187. Voters approved the law, which requires police, health workers, and teachers to check and report everyone’s immigration status. , report illegal immigrants, including children, to federal authorities.
The law “destroyed the Republican brand in the eyes of white people who were disgusted by immigrants, their children, and xenophobic appeals, and pushed them all into the hands of pro-immigration Democrats,” Democratic Vice-President Trump said. President Alex Nowras said. The Libertarian CATO Institute for Economic and Social Policy Research said in a 2016 analysis:
But SB 4 differs from Proposition 187 in important ways, he said. Texas law specifically prohibits enforcement in places such as schools, hospitals and churches, and targets border security rather than domestic enforcement.
“While the scope of SB 4 is large, it is much smaller than Proposition 187,” Nowras told USA TODAY. “Even in border communities, they are concerned about border security. They may be concerned about being misidentified, but they are also concerned about individuals coming across the border, so SB Opposition to 4 is softened.”
In the 1990s, a federal district judge ruled that Prop. 187 violated the U.S. Constitution. A court-mediated settlement in 1999 ended countless legal challenges to the law. Wilson lost the next election, and the Democratic Party gained ground in California.
A decade later, in Arizona, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio gained national fame, or notoriety, for aggressively enforcing the state’s “show me your papers” law. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down most of Arizona’s SB 1070 in 2012, arguing that the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause places immigrants under the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal government, a precedent that courts have followed for years. has supported.
Arpaio has been unsuccessfully elected to office four times before returning to public office after being found guilty of contempt of court for ignoring a judge’s order for his agency to stop racially profiling Latinos. There was no. (He was later pardoned by President Donald Trump.)
Grassroots Latino organizations that grew out of opposition to the law remain politically active. In his decade following SB 1070, Latinos increased their representation in the Arizona Legislature and gained twice as many seats in the House of Representatives as she did.
Limón Garza said she and other immigrant advocacy groups are working with California activists who led attacks on Prop. 187 and Arizona organizations that resisted SB1070. They said they are also building a coalition in Texas.
“That’s how I sleep at night,” she said. “I think there’s going to be collateral damage. There’s going to be damage, too. But it comes back to strategy and being very intentional. If we’re disciplined with our strategy, in 10 years we’re going to have more You can come back stronger.”
Already, advocates are rallying around a new statewide organization created last year in response to Mr. Abbott’s border efforts. The Texas Immigration Law Council’s mission is to “protect and advance the rights of immigrants and refugees of all nationalities in Texas.”
“There’s a lot of organizing going on along the border, from shelter organizations to legal services organizations to local and national organizations,” said Dennis Gilman, co-director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas at Austin. . “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this level of collaboration and common purpose in the state of Texas before.”
Governor Greg Abbott: ‘Texas will hold the line’
For now, Mr. Abbott enjoys broad support for his efforts on the border and immigration.
A poll conducted in February by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin found that more than half of respondents “strongly approve” of Mr. Abbott’s policies, including deploying state and military resources to the border and installing razor blades. ” or that they supported it “to some extent.” installation of power lines on the Rio Grande, construction or repair of border barriers;
Agreeing with SB 4, 60% of respondents said they support making it a state crime for illegal immigrants to be in Texas in most circumstances.
Governors continue to pour political capital and taxpayer dollars into border strategies.
Last week, he met with House Speaker Mike Johnson in Austin to push for passage of the border security bill, which Johnson helped stall earlier this year.
Mr. Abbott touted the state’s immigrant bus program., It has sent more than 108,000 immigrants out of the state to Democratic-led “sanctuary” cities such as New York, Chicago and Denver. And he broke ground on a Texas National Guard “forward operating base” being built on the border that will house 2,300 soldiers.
“Texas will hold the line,” Abbott told X after migrants rushed to the border in El Paso, broke through the razor wire barrier and turned themselves in to Border Patrol agents.
The SB 4 law has not been allowed to go into effect because legal challenges will likely wind their way through the court system and head to the Supreme Court. The political impact of SB 4 may only be felt if the law goes into effect.
“Once the legal challenges are cleared, we need to see how they will be implemented and where they will be implemented,” said Kristin Etter, director of policy and legal services at the Texas Immigration Law Council. There is,” he said.
Resistance to the law remains strong until “Texans understand what the consequences will be when immigrants begin to leave the state, or when they see their family and friends turned back.” ” You may not be able to feel it.
Lauren Villagran can be reached at lvillagran@usatoday.com or X @laurenvillagran.
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