During Thursday's trial opening, Judge David A. Ezra of the Western District of Texas appeared skeptical about the constitutionality of Texas' law, which would allow state and local police to arrest and deport migrants who cross the border illegally.
During questioning, Ezra directed the majority of his questions to the lawyer for Texas' attorney general and repeatedly "took jabs" at state legislators, at one point saying "a little more care" should have gone into drafting the law, according to the Texas Tribune. The judge, a Reagan administration appointee, also cracked jokes about the state's difficult position defending the measure.
“Let’s say for the purpose of argument that I agree with you,” Ezra told Texas' lawyer, Ryan Walters, according to the New York Times' report on the trial. California might follow by passing its own law on the deportation of migrants, setting off a chain reaction among other states, the judge argued.
“That turns us from the United States of America into a confederation of states,” Ezra said. “What a nightmare.”
Lawyers for the Biden administration and Texas are duking it out in court over whether the state's Republican-backed Senate Bill 4, which goes into effect March 5, violates the U.S. Constitution. The White House argues the law usurps what courts have long considered to be a federal responsibility: immigration enforcement.
SB 4 makes illegally crossing the border a Class B state misdemeanor carrying a punishment of up to six months of jail time. Repeat offenders could face a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison, which critics argue is inhumane and unnecessarily harsh.
Civil-rights groups have also called SB 4 the "show me your papers law," arguing that it would increase racial profiling by state and local police. They argue the legislation gives authorities carte blanche to stop and arrest any Latinx person they suspect of being in the state without documents.
While Texas' lawyers said during Thursday's opening arguments that SB 4 was designed not work in concert with federal law, Ezra didn't appear to be swayed, according to the Times.
The judge said he's concerned Texas' law doesn't allow judges to pause prosecutions in cases where a person is applying for asylum, the paper reports. He characterized that shortcoming as “very problematic.”
“It just slaps the federal immigration law in the face,” Ezra added, according to the Times.
However Erza decides the case, it's likely to end up at the U.S. Supreme Court. While the high court has upheld the federal government's authority to enforce immigration in the past, legal scholars point out that the court was remade during Donald Trump's term in the White House, giving it a conservative supermajority.“This will be a momentous decision,” Fatma E. Marouf, a law professor and director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at the Texas A&M University School of Law, told the Times. “If they uphold this law, it will be a whole new world. It’s hard to imagine what Texas couldn’t do, if this were allowed.”
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