Texas Scores Border Security Victory With New Decision by 5th Circuit

Are you tired of winning yet? Texas surely isn't; the Lone Star State was, on Friday, handed a major legal victory by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, so that Texas can now enforce SB 4, which makes it a state-level crime to enter Texas from another country at any place other than a recognized crossing point.

It's a significant win for border security.

AUSTIN, Texas - An appeals court has lifted a block on a state law that allows Texas to enforce immigration law.
The backstory:
Texas Senate Bill 4, passed in 2023 and scheduled to take effect in 2024, made entering Texas from another country anywhere outside of an official border crossing a state crime. It allowed state authorities to arrest people in those cases and allowed state judges to order them to self-deport.
A lawsuit filed by El Paso County and some non-profit groups led to an injunction from a lower court that stopped enforcement of the law. Opponents said immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility.
What's new:
On Friday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 10-7 decision that the parties suing to prevent the law from going into effect lacked standing and lifted the restraining order.
Judges did not rule on whether the law is constitutional.

That last part, the determination of whether the law is constitutional, leaves the door open for further legal cases and arguments, but for now, it seems Texas can start arresting illegal aliens.

Trump Wins Big As 5th Circuit Upholds Indefinite Detention Without Bond for Illegal Immigrants

The 5th Circuit's ruling is on procedural grounds, determining that the plaintiffs didn't have standing.

On Friday, the court issued a 12-page ruling solely on procedural grounds, arguing the plaintiffs didn’t have standing to sue. It didn’t address the merits of the claims.
Circuit Judge Jerry Smith wrote the opinion for the majority, joined by Chief Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod and judges Edith Jones, Catharina Haynes, Don Willett, James Ho, Stuart Duncan, Kurt Engelhardt, Andrew Oldham and Cory Wilson. Citing Supreme Court cases, Smith wrote, “‘Courts sometimes make standing law more complicated than it needs to be; … [P]laintiffs must have a ‘personal stake’ in a case to have standing to sue; … Plaintiffs cannot ‘manufacture standing by voluntarily’ incurring costs.’
“That should be the end of this matter: These Plaintiffs voluntarily incurred costs to advocate for clients. Under recent Supreme Court precedent, that falls far short of conferring standing. We vacate the preliminary injunction to the contrary.”

Will this be the end of the matter? It seems unlikely, but it's still a win for Texas.

This Texas law, we should note, would not have been necessary were it not for the Biden administration's inaction on the border. Texas claimed to have taken action based on Article 1, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution, which reads in part:

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

Calling thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants pouring across the border from Texas into Mexico sure would seem to have all the hallmarks of an invasion, not to mention presenting imminent danger, as any number of Angel parents might be able to testify.

No, the legal wrangling probably isn't over yet. But this looks like a win.

Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump, illegal immigration into our great country has virtually stopped. Despite the radical left's lies, new legislation wasn't needed to secure our border, just a new president.

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