A U.S. appeals court on Friday appeared to clear the way for an unprecedented Texas law empowering state officials to arrest and deport migrants.
The largely conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the plaintiffs challenging the 2023 law — passed when hundreds of thousands of migrants were crossing into the U.S. each month — do not have standing. The case now heads back to a lower court.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether Texas officials plan to begin enforcing the law should it take effect. The measure allows any police officer in the state to arrest migrants they suspect of entering illegally and empowers judges to order their removal. A spokesman for Gov. Greg Abbott said his office was reviewing the decision.
The governor “thanks the Fifth Circuit for reaffirming this common-sense law that helps ensure public safety,” Andrew Mahaleris said. “Texas will not back down from its constitutional right to self-defense.”
The plaintiffs called the ruling “a setback, not the final word.”
“We are alarmed by the Fifth Circuit’s decision to allow S.B. 4 to move forward, leaving immigrant families across Texas to live in fear of a law that a prior panel rightly found unconstitutional,” said Edna Yang, co-executive director of American Gateways.
The Biden administration sued to stop the law in 2024, arguing Texas was seizing immigration enforcement powers long left to the federal government. But the Trump administration pulled out of the case last year, leaving El Paso County and two advocacy groups to carry the legal challenge. Texas state troopers are already assisting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort.
The 5th Circuit wrote in the 10-7 ruling that the law “is enforceable only against aliens illegally present in Texas, not against advocacy organizations or Texas counties,” the opinion said.
The ruling did not address the law itself, even as it overturned a lower court ruling that called the law “patently unconstitutional.” Seven justices on the appeals court appeared to agree in a dissenting opinion Friday.
“Federal laws on the books permit Texas to assist the federal government in apprehending illegal immigrants if the federal government so requests,” they wrote. “But Texas cannot enact its own immigration regime.”
Attorney General Ken Paxton cheered the ruling.
“Texas’s right to arrest illegals, protect our citizens, and enforce immigration law is fundamental,” he wrote on X. “This is a major win for public safety and law and order.”
When they passed the law, Texas Republicans said they hoped it would spur the now-solidly conservative Supreme Court to revisit a landmark 2012 ruling that held that only the federal government has the power to enforce immigration laws. In that case, the high court struck down portions of an Arizona law authorizing police to arrest anyone suspected of being in the country illegally.
Friday’s ruling was the latest in a lengthy and winding court battle. The law briefly took effect in 2024 amid rapid-fire rulings from courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, but no arrests were made in the roughly nine-hour period in which it was in place.