Supreme Court Extends the Stay on Texas Immigration Law ‘Pending Further Order’
SCOTUS will take action but we do not know when it will happen.
The Supreme Court has extended the block on a Texas immigration law until further notice.
In a one-sheet order, Justice Samuel Alito confirmed the extension of the stay “pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court.”
SCOTUS will take action but we do not know when it will happen.
Senate Bill 4 allows state law enforcement to arrest and detain illegal immigrants who cross the border outside of legal ports of entry.
The Biden administration claimed the law “conflicts with federal law in multiple respects.” One reason is because it stops the country “from speaking ‘with one voice’ in matters involving foreign affairs.”
SCOTUS issued a stay on March 4 when the DOJ asked for one after the 5th Circuit allowed the law to go into effect, overturning a lower court.
On February 29, U.S. District Judge David Ezra’s preliminary injunction halted the law because it conflicts with federal law and violates the supremacy clause.
Ezra also wrote, “If allowed to proceed, SB 4 could open the door to each state passing its own version of immigration laws.”
But the 5th Circuit granted a stay on the decision. The court did not explain its reasoning.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
On the grounds that the US Constitution may, in fact, be a suicide pact.
Texas has ignored it by continuing to ENFORCE federal immigration law.
And therein lies the bullshit of this whole affair! Texas is being told they cannot enforce the actual immigration laws already in force 😂😂
The Supreme Court is not a suicide pact.
Marbury v. Madison was a very odd decision. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. SCOTUS wasn’t supposed to be this dominant.
It wasn’t odd. Political creatures made a decision to give themselves more power. That sounds like the norm. It’s not like the other branches are doing what they are supposed to…look at how much unchecked power the POTUS now has.
Actually it was supposed to be exactly like this. Read Federalist 78:
And that is exactly what Marbury v Madison says.
The really peculiar thing about Marbury v Madison is that Marshall did not recuse himself. It’s unthinkable that any modern justice would sit in such a case directly involving his own action at his previous job.
A somewhat less peculiar thing is that first Act of Congress struck down by a court was one unconstitutionally expanding the court’s jurisdiction. Those who see this case as the judicial branch grabbing power from the legislative must explain how it is that it did so specifically in order to limit its power.
What happens if Texas and other states ignore SCOTUS?
Why not?? Joe Biden has.
No, he hasn’t.
And what will happen if a Texas officer were to arrest someone under this suspended law is that the nearest court would grant a writ of habeas corpus, and if that were not honored the judge would send US marshals to free the prisoner and arrest whoever was holding him. As well as anyone, up to and including the governor, who ordered it.
Lol. Joe Biden is still retiring student loan debt after the Supreme Court told him he couldn’t.
No, it didn’t. He is in full compliance with the decision.
Milhouse is right. Anyone arrested would eventually receive a big apology check from the Texas taxpayers.
Just like the US taxpayers will get for the forgiven student loans we are paying for that the Supreme Court said Biden could not… you mean like that … or is it (D)ifferent?
I wonder where the breaking point would be. Texas always has one foot out the door. No doubt it’s being flooded with illegals partly to shift the state to one that doesn’t have those odd thoughts of freedom.
Very different. First of all, you are not telling the truth. The Supreme Court never said that Biden can’t forgive student debts. It can’t say that. All it said, and all it could say, is that the HEROES Act doesn’t authorize him to do that. He accepted that decision and is fully complying with it. As a result of that decision he canceled all plans to use that act in that manner. Instead he asked his legal advisers to scrounge around for other acts that can be used to forgive at least some debt, and as they find them he uses them to whatever extent they allow it. They haven’t yet found one that gives him the sort of broad power they thought they’d found in the HEROES Act, so there hasn’t yet been the sort of wholesale forgiveness that he had originally announced.
Second, even if someone with standing were to bring suit claiming that the laws he’s using now also don’t give him the powers he claims they do, and even if they win their cases, in order to recover the improperly forgiven debt the USA would have to bring suit against the borrowers. The next Republican administration might do so, but this administration wouldn’t.
Whereas anyone illegally arrested by Texas would immediately sue for false imprisonment and win.
Of course right now there’s a window, until the 5th circuit acts, in which the arrests would be presumed legal; if they later turn out to have been illegal after all they might get some compensation, but there would be no punitive damages, let alone contempt orders.
Yes, he has. On more than one occaision. He’s ignorning immigration laws (lots of them) and he’s going to town as noted below on student loan debt. Right up there with Obama era EOs.
No, he has not. He is in full compliance with all court orders and decisions.
If SCOTUS rules that central government dereliction of duty to enforce border protection—and even actively undermining border protection—trumps a state’s duty to defend its citizens, then SCOTUS deserves to be ignored. The central government operates under a federal system where states retain the duty to defend the lives, liberty, and property of citizens. Texas is leading the way by defying the oath breaking regime and halting the its non-enforcement (voter import) policy. Read and understand the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. Jefferson and Madison has this absolutely right!
Those resolutions carefully did not assert that a state is free to ignore a law that it thinks unconstitutional. They were political statements, protesting an allegedly unconstitutional law, and requesting the next congress to repeal it, or requesting all the states to act together and nullify it by constitutional means (they didn’t say how, but the obvious method would be a constitutional convention and a subsequent amendment). Madison explicitly said that a state can’t unilaterally nullify a law, even if it believes it to be unconstitutional. That’s why he deleted the words “void and of no force or effect” from the draft.
“foreign affairs”?? LOL. It’s as domestic as you can get. It’s about AMERICAN soil.
A border, by definition, has two sides, and therefore falls under the foreign affairs power.
Texas’ law was only regarding illegals on American territory. That is domestic policy.
I hate to break it to you but American immigration policy, in general, and American border policy, in specific is NOT “foreign affairs”. It is the most domestic policy you can have since it regards the foundational concept of American sovereignty over American territory.
Yeah … I breathe molecules that came in from outside of America – that doesn’t make my breathing “foreign affairs”. Every bit of water on American land ends up being dumped into the ocean and leaving America. That doesn’t make all water a matter of “foreign affairs”. The sun is outside of AMerica. That doesn’t make my sunbathing “foreign affairs”.
Your abuse of English is near-criminal.
Not so, because it’s based on their being here illegally, and that is a matter of federal law, made under the foreign affairs power. Remember there is no immigration power in the constitution; all immigration laws are based on the foreign affairs power, or at least that’s what the Supreme Court said when the first immigration laws were made, back in the 1870s or so.
I agree with you, but apparently SCOTUS agrees with Milhouse. I don’t know why, but they do. To hell with freedom and self determination, is their attitude. I know KBJ thinks that way, but I thought the rest were better than that.
So .. anyone arresting any foreigner on American soil is engaging in “foreign affairs” … Local and state cops are not allowed to touch any foreigner who they suspect committed a crime. That is all a job for the FBI. Speeding tickets to a Honduran? Call the FBI. “Foreign affairs”. Federal matter. Mugging by a Mexican? Stay away cops. IT’s a job for the FBI and the US attorney. “Foreign affairs”.
LOL.
Not in most cases, because there is no federal law saying states can’t arrest foreigners who commit crimes. But where such a law does exist, such as in the case of registered diplomats, the states are indeed without power to arrest them. And Congress’s authority to make such a law does indeed come from its power over foreign affairs.
I think TX may be on firmer ground. While SCOTUS has expanded via precedent the scope of Federal powers over ‘immigration’ the US Constitution only grants the Feds power over Naturalization which is a related but distinct process.
A State which created a statute criminalizing X while the Feds have a statute criminalizing the same conduct doesn’t mean the State can’t prosecute. It is entirely reasonable for the State to act in cases which don’t involve interstate elements. This would be especially so in cases where the Fed Govt declines to exercise its own power of arrest and prosecution.
One could also make a reasonable argument that any presumption of Federal gov’t supremacy baring State action entirely would be limited to the international border and immediately adjacent areas. This distinction already applies in a (I recall) 100 mile limit on mandatory Border Patrol checkpoints within the interior whose constitutionality was affirmed in US v Martinez-Fuerte.
Bottom line is I don’t think this is as cut and dried simplistic as we.may think. I could be wrong but until the correct SCOTUS rules we really don’t know for sure.
Sure Janus….
I’d say registered diplomats is a separate issue–diplomatic immunity has been worked out in many countries. Few of them are acting as stupidly as we are by ignoring our own laws that require illegals to be detained and deported in most cases.
Diplomatic immunity is not a separate issue. By what power does Congress tell the states that they can’t arrest foreign diplomats who commit crimes? The fact that it’s “been worked out in many countries” doesn’t give Congress that power. So what does? The foreign affairs power. That is what allows Congress to override state law and order the states to leave diplomats alone, even though they are entirely within the USA at the time the state would like to arrest them, and even though the crimes they have allegedly committed were entirely within the state. That is enough to destroy Primordial’s argument.
Your argument is ludicrous. Immigration law bars the virtually unrestricted immigration the Democrat regime has unleashed. The executive branch is specifically charged with faithfully enforcing our laws. Failure to enforce our immigration laws was a conscious policy—evidenced by Prez Send Money Now c/o The Big Guy’s first day destruction of every Trump border protection policy plus subsequent regime actions. Ensuring the border is a sieve is not “foreign policy” but a matter of domestic protection. The spirit of the invasion clause easily applies to the regime’s border dereliction. States are the only entities with power to defy the central tyranny in DC—including any regime-backing decisions of federal courts including SCOTUS.
Nothing you wrote there makes any sense. Yes, of course the president is charged with enforcing the laws, and yes, he consciously refuses to do so. Nobody disputes that. The only question is whether anyone has the power to do anything about it.
Congress could impeach and remove him, if it liked, but that is obviously not going to happen. The people may yet remove him for it at the next election, but that will be too late. The question is whether a state can do something about it. Texas is trying, but the means it has chosen doesn’t seem constitutional.
Right now it has a window to act, because of the 5th circuit’s peculiar behavior. But now the supreme court has explicitly instructed the 5th circuit to act, and if it doesn’t then Biden can come back to the Supreme Court for relief.
Your claim that “States are the only entities with power to defy the central tyranny in DC—including any regime-backing decisions of federal courts including SCOTUS” is indeed ludicrous. They don’t have that power.
I’m a little baffled. Senate Bill 4 only prohibits Sanctuary Cities or Counties and requires local and state law enforcement to comply with federal immigration law. They are literally enforcing federal law and SCOTUS is saying they can’t?
Most Border States have reciprocity agreements with Federal Authorities to enter the border area and help enforce the law. This goes both ways.
It’s not SCOTUS that says so, it’s the federal government. SCOTUS has ruled many times that states can’t enforce federal law if the federal government doesn’t want them to.
If they actually had reciprocity agreements allowing them to, then they could do so and there wouldn’t be an issue. But they don’t. The agreements don’t allow the states to enforce the law without a federal request.
Not only can states not enforce federal law, they’re preempted from passing their own identical or even vaguely related law and enforcing that. So FedGov can nullify lots of state laws just by passing similar federal laws, then not enforcing them, and that’s what they are doing here.
States have state laws against bank robbery, as a counter-example, which is a federal crime.
PA State law:
That is just one of many such examples.
You presented a counterexample to a paraphrase of what I wrote, not what I actually wrote “can nullify lots of state laws”, because I was aware of that and took it into account. I am not sure which sorts of laws can be preempted though, perhaps you could provide some texture.
What you did is bad academic form. I am surprised.
I was just giving an example of where states have made law regarding circumstances that are exactly covered under federal law and the courts don’t seem to have had any issues with it.
And bank robbery stands out because everyone knows that it is really a local issue and states enforce almost everything about it … until the FBI might saunter in and decide to take over. It seems relevant to me.
The same thing came up when Barky colluded with Mexico to sue Arizona to stop helping to enforce federal law, which Barky specifically stated he did not want to enforce (which is, of course, itself illegal). But the SCOTUS sided with America’s enemies and the destruction of America on that one.
Heck, the courts allow obvious double jeopardy when the feds don’t like a state court’s verdict about something and try the same defendants on the laughable “federal rights violations” charges.
To be clear, I totally agree with you that the feds are trying to use the Supremacy argument merely to allow for the continuation of their alien invasion. My point was only that the courts seems to pick and choose, randomly, on when they allow that sort of thing and when they claim to see infringements.
The federal government doesn’t have exclusive power over bank robbery. Therefore state and federal laws can coexist. States can even enforce the federal law, if and only if the federal government gives them permission. Or states can refuse to enforce the federal law, and refuse to assist the feds in enforcing it.
But Congress could make a national bank robbery law that explicitly says it’s the exclusive law on the subject, and that would automatically nullify all state laws. The states would no longer be able to enforce their laws. There are already many areas of banking law where federal law preempts state law. For instance federal law allows banks to charge the maximum interest rate in whichever state they’re located, even if the borrower is in a state with a lower limit. So Congress could preempt the entire field of bank robbery, or even the entire banking industry. It has chosen not to.
More related to this subject, federal laws imposing sanctions on foreign countries, which usually give the president the power to waive them as he sees fit, preempt all state laws that would interfere with that flexibility. See Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council.
And yet..,, A divided Supreme Court has lifted a stay on a Texas law that gives police broad powers to arrest migrants suspected of crossing the border illegally while a legal battle over immigration authority plays out.
Milhouse always remember… the law is NOT a hard science… just a bunch of “opinions”
Today’s supreme court action has absolutely no relation to the merits of the case, or even of the injunction. Read it; it’s entirely based on the fact that the 5th circuit issued not a stay pending appeal but an administrative stay. Those are only supposed to last a few days, not weeks and weeks.
As Barrett wrote, the Supreme Court has never yet struck down an administrative stay, and it doesn’t propose to start now. But if the 5th circuit doesn’t get on it PDQ and either grant or reject a stay pending appeal, Biden is invited to go back to SCOTUS. And of course if it rejects the stay, he can appeal it to SCOTUS.
Texas should do nothing with them. Not feed them clothe them, doctor them, or arrest them for any crime committed subsequent to their crossing. The backlash would solve this problem for all time.
They need to vigorously enforce laws against vagrancy, trespassing, theft, drug possession, public defecation, etc., then have ICE on speed-dial.
Agree, and I think that’s their general approach. There’s this big city/colony of them outside Houston, and the state is pretty much hands-off. Let them fend for themselves, provide their own utilities, their own police, whatever. I agree completely with this strategy in the circumstances, and even generally. These people want to break into the US, so give them wide open spaces like the old frontier and let them build it, or not. The true American way, which is building, not welfare.
I’m of two minds on this. My gut approach is exactly what you said, and then I think that the U.S. should not give up an inch of land for these squatters. Send them directly to the homes of the congressmen and senators and judges and agency heads who perpetuate this BS.
But Texas can’t do that. It can do what it’s doing. I am fully sympathetic with using them as weapons against their sponsors, but it’s not usually possible and what is possible could cause real legal backlash.
I wonder how this is going to play out in the long run. We have a president who is bluntly refusing to enforce federal immigration law. Impeachment is not a realistic option.
We do have an election coming up. If Biden wins he will declare that he has a “mandate from the voters” to continue his terrible policies and perhaps make them worse.
In theory if Trump wins he will start enforcing immigration laws again, but in practice we’ll have to see if he will be able to govern at all. I think he will see massive obstruction within government and widespread riots from the Antifa crew.
Things will be getting interesting.
If Biden wins he will indeed declare that he has a mandate to continue as he has been. And he’ll probably be right. So it’s important that he should not win.
The SCOTUS has just removed the stay and allowed Texas’ SB4 to go into effect.
Good start towards sane border control.
No, it’s not a start towards anything, because the merits of the underlying case played no part in it. That is still down in the district court in Texas.
SCOTUS just ruled TX.may proceed with enforcement of their State law.
Only for a few days until the 5th circuit decides whether to defecate or get off the pot.
the ruling
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23a814_febh.pdf
Here is the TLDR summary:
That last sentence is key. “If a decision does not issue soon, the applicants may return to this Court.” In other words, 5th circuit, get off your behinds. You have all the information you need, stop with this administrative stay nonsense and decide whether you’re going to issue a proper stay. That way whoever loses can appeal to us.