To progressives, the idea of arresting someone for doing something illegal is nightmare fuel. Especially if the illegal act is crossing the border without authorization. But Texas sees things differently, and passed a law allowing law enforcement to arrest people they suspect are illegally entering the United States from Mexico.
A simple, common-sense solution.
Not to the left, which is why the move ended up before the Supreme Court.
As The Hill reported, the Biden administration had urged the justices to block the law, passed by Texas’s Republican-controlled legislature last year, asserting it is an “unprecedented intrusion into federal immigration enforcement.”
Federal immigration enforcement?
As House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mark E. Green, MD (R-TN) said in a December statement: “I fear the extent of the threat posed by the record-number of gotaways on Secretary Mayorkas’ watch won’t be clear until it is too late. The number of individuals apprehended illegally crossing the Southwest border and found to be on the terrorist watchlist has increased 2,500 percent from Fiscal Years 2017-2020 to Fiscal Year 2023. And those are only who we’ve caught.
“How many others have slipped by as Border Patrol agents have increasingly been pulled off the line to process illegal aliens crossing the border? How many violent criminals and gang members are now at large in our communities? Border security is national security, and right now, the border is not secure. When upwards of two million people have entered our country, whom we know nothing about, we are at deadly risk.”
It sounds like the feds could use a hand in arresting those caught entering the country illegally. The Supreme Court thinks so. It greenlighted the Texas law Tuesday, though three liberal justices publicly dissented. The order is not a final decision, and the case could return to the high court.
As a border state, Texas has been the canary in the coal mine of the migrant crisis. For years officials there sounded the alarm on illegal immigrants and how state and city shelters were past the breaking point as more and more people crossed the border.
They were derided by the left as xenophobic NIMBYs without compassion. It wasn’t until Texas exported the issue to northern states that the extent of the problem became obvious, even to blue states.
Now, Americans can’t go a day without hearing of cities struggling to find room to house a continued influx of migrants, with some having to bunk down at airports for the night. Crime linked to migrants, often with gang ties, make the headlines every week. Police are attacked, stores and people robbed and assaulted.
In Massachusetts, it’s a question of “who’s next” when it comes to communities and sites “selected” to shelter migrants.
The Texas statute enabling its law enforcement officers to enforce the law could be a valuable assist for our beleaguered Border Patrol officers, and help curb the steady stream northward.
Those on the left find the Texas answer to illegal immigration appalling, and there will likely be more legal push back.
But what’s needed in D.C. — and around the country — is more of that “don’t mess with Texas” attitude.
