Biden And Red States Are On Immigration Collision Course Heading For Supreme Court

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

The Biden administration is currently waging a legal campaign against Republican-led states, arguing their laws that effectively restrict illegal immigration are unconstitutional.

The Department of Justice has so far filed lawsuits against three different states for enacting laws that largely empower police to enforce immigration rules. However, these state leaders, in the backdrop of an unprecedented border crisis, say they have no choice but to take up the issue themselves because the Biden administration won’t — and other Republican states may soon follow suit.

Texas, Iowa, and Oklahoma have all signed similar bills into law in recent months that make it a state crime to be an illegal immigrant. Texas Senate Bill 4, Iowa Senate File 2340, and Oklahoma House Bill 4156 empower their law enforcement to arrest illegal immigrants and bestow various penalties for unlawful presence in the country.

“Due to the abdication of this administration’s duty to enforce the law, states are trying to protect themselves,” Matt Crapo, a senior attorney with the Immigration Reform Law Institute, explained to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “They are trying to do so by mirroring federal law, enforcing the same type of laws if this administration was enforcing the law.”

The Biden administration, however, argues these laws are unconstitutional as they intrude on the federal government’s sole authority to enforce immigration law.

Whether or not these states can enforce their laws will likely depend on the Supreme Court. The law passed in Texas, the first of the three to take up this approach, will likely end up back into the nation’s highest court.

The Immigration Reform Law Institute, a legal organization that supports stricter immigration enforcement, filed an amicus brief in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in support of Texas SB4. Crapo said his organization plans to file similar briefs supporting the Iowa and Oklahoma bills once those states file in opposition to preliminary injunctions imposed by federal courts.

IRLI argued in its Texas brief that, while SB4 “parallels” similar federal immigration offenses, the law does not interfere with the federal government’s power to decide which classes of aliens are admissible or removable.

However, not all legal experts agree the Texas law adheres to the Constitution.

“SB4 is cruel, inhumane, and clearly unconstitutional,” Kate Melloy Goettel, senior legal director at the American Immigration Council, said in March statement. “All these bills could result in significant civil rights abuses, leading to widespread arrests and deportations by state actors without key federal protections.”

“Our hope is that SB4 is ultimately blocked in court; otherwise, this sets a disastrous precedent,” Goettel continued.

Immigration experts aren’t sure how the Supreme Court will ultimately rule.

“It’s sort of an open question as to whether the Supreme Court is going to allow Texas to criminalize illegal entry into Texas,” Art Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies said to the DCNF, noting how this case is fundamentally different than the lawsuit against a 2010 Arizona law that criminalized illegal immigration status, but was largely struck down. “Texas’ argument is ‘look, the federal government doesn’t completely occupy the field with respect to this crime because trespassing is an essential state crime and this is basically a trespassing offense.’”

Arthur noted that the Texas legislation is fundamentally different to the Iowa and Oklahoma laws, meaning potentially very different outcomes in their court challenges. Unlike Oklahoma and Iowa, Texas borders Mexico and has more standing to enforce trespassing.

“The Supreme Court’s decision in SB4 will give us a lot of idea of how much vitality these other laws have, but these other laws are distinguishable from SB4,” he said. “For that reason, if the states are serious about this, they will have to litigate it all the way up to the Supreme Court.”

Similar to what sponsors of this legislation have argued, Arthur said that the passages of these state laws are not “political stunts,” but cries for help and assertions that the Biden administration has abandoned immigration enforcement.

Federal immigration data show that illegal immigration is at historic levels.

Border Patrol agents have had more than 1,171,000 encounters with illegal immigrants this fiscal year, according to the latest data by Customs and Border Protection. Well over six million such encounters have been made since the beginning of President Joe Biden’s White House tenure.

The massive influx of illegal immigrants has been followed by high-profile crimes, such as the killing of a Georgia nursing student allegedly at the hands of a Venezuelan illegal immigrant and the attempted breach of the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia allegedly by two Jordanian nationals living unlawfully in the country. A report by a New Jersey lawmaker found that his state is shelling out over $7 billion annually to cover the costs of illegal immigrants.

For these reasons, Republican state leaders say they have no choice but to address the crisis themselves — even if the Biden administration threatens to sue them for it.

“The Biden administration refuses to do their job, so we need to do it,” Louisiana state senator Valarie Hodges said to the DCNF. Hodges is the sponsor of a bill that, if signed into law, will also make illegal immigration a state crime.

Her legislation, Senate Bill 388, makes illegal entry punishable by up to one year in prison and a $4,000 fine for the first offense, and up to two years in prison and a $10,000 fine for a second offense. The bill has already passed both chambers in the state legislature, and needs procedural approval from the state senate before heading to the governor’s desk.

Much like the governors and attorneys general of the states already sued by the Department of Justice, the state senator appeared unfazed at the prospect of a court challenge.

“When the federal government won’t do their job, what course do we have?” Hodges asked. “We’re going to collapse if we don’t do something. I believe we are within our constitutional boundaries to do this.”

“Maybe we should sue them for not doing their job,” she added.

The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.

Related Topics:#DailyCaller #IllegalImmigration #IowaSenateFile2340 #JasonHopkins #OklahomaHouseBill4156 #TexasSenateBill4

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LA protests continue as judge pulls back CA National Guard ahead of ‘No Kings Day’

Published on June 12, 2025

Todayville

From The Center Square

By Tim Clouser

Protests in Los Angeles continued into Thursday night as tensions died down across the West Coast ahead of thousands of anti-Trump demonstrations planned for Saturday — the “No Kings Day” event is set to take place coast-to-coast amid civil unrest nationwide.

The Los Angeles Police Department posted to X as the 8 p.m. curfew went into effect Thursday, reporting that protesters were throwing “bricks, concrete and commercial grade fireworks.” The agency said less lethal munitions have been authorized and “may cause pain and discomfort.

The curfew covers an area where demonstrators have spent days protesting President Donald Trump’s immigration raids and the deployment of the California National Guard. A federal judge blocked his use of the guard late Thursday, but did not rule on the Marines also deployed there.

Gov. Gavin Newsom held a press conference in San Francisco shortly after the ruling, calling out Trump for deploying the guard without his consent. U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer’s preliminary injunction takes effect Friday, at which point Newsom will resume control of his National Guard.

“This is what he does. He creates a problem, and then he tries to be a hero in his own Marvel movie. He initiated those raids,” Newsom said of Trump’s actions. “He significantly increased the scale and scope of those raids. That’s why he wants the National Guard, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of guardsmen and women, now being dispersed everywhere.”

The Trump administration filed an intent to appeal Breyer’s ruling shortly after. In the meantime, the guard will go back to its regular duties on Friday instead of guarding the federal immigration in downtown Los Angeles, only one day before thousands of protests nationwide against Trump.

According to a press release, the LAPD arrested 71 people for failure to disperse Wednesday night into Thursday morning, and intends to post another update Friday morning. Seven others were also arrested for violating the curfew, and two for assaulting an officer with a deadly weapon.

Protesters filmed live streams on YouTube leading up to the curfew, reporting that some people were arrested and that they heard munitions being fired. Some demonstrators encouraged the group to disperse, adding that escalating things may be what the administration is waiting for.

The Los Angeles Department of Transportation posted to social media Thursday evening that it had cut services short for the day in response to the protests. LAPD vehicles were seen lining the streets, with officers ready to issue arrests in the event of further unrest or curfew violations.

In some live streams, officers were seen issuing arrests just 30 minutes after the 8 p.m. curfew, and in some instances, towing away vehicles. Another protest in Salt Lake City, Utah, kicked off at 6 p.m. on Thursday after the Party for Socialism & Liberation called for demonstrations there.

The Salt Lake Police Department told KSL News Radio that the demonstration of roughly 600 people was mostly peaceful, aside from a damaged Tesla. Officers broke up some fights and remained on scene as it died down around 8:30 p.m., Brian Will with KUTV 2 News reported.

This is a developing story.

Tim Clouser

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Business

Trump: ‘Changes are coming’ to aggressive immigration policy after business complaints

Published on June 12, 2025

Todayville

From The Center Square

By Brett Rowland

“So we’re going to have an order on that pretty soon – we can’t do that to our farmers and leisure too, hotels, we’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.”

President Donald Trump said Thursday that changes are coming to his aggressive immigration policies after complaints from farmers and business owners.

“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump wrote in a social media post Thursday morning. “In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”

Later Thursday, Trump made it clear that businesses need workers.

“Our farmers are being hurt badly. They have very good workers – they’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be great. And we’re going to have to do something about that,” the president said.

He added: “We can’t take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don’t have, maybe, what they’re supposed to have.”

Just how Trump may change his approach to immigration enforcement remains unclear, but he said he wants to help farmers and business owners.

“You go into a farm and you look and people, they’ve been there for 20 or 25 years and they work great and the owner of the farm loves them and you’re supposed to throw them out. You know what happens? They end up hiring the criminals that have come in, the murderers from prisons and everything else,” Trump said.

Trump said changes would be coming soon, but gave little detail on how policies could change.

“So we’re going to have an order on that pretty soon – we can’t do that to our farmers and leisure too, hotels, we’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.”

In a later post on Truth Social, Trump said illegal immigration had destroyed American institutions.

“Biden let 21 Million Unvetted, Illegal Aliens flood into the Country from some of the most dangerous and dysfunctional Nations on Earth — Many of them Rapists, Murderers, and Terrorists. This tsunami of Illegals has destroyed Americans’ Public Schools, Hospitals, Parks, Community Resources, and Living Conditions,” the president wrote. “They have stolen American Jobs, consumed BILLIONS OF DOLLARS in Free Welfare, and turned once idyllic Communities, like Springfield, Ohio, into Third World Nightmares.”

He added that deportations would continue: “I campaigned on, and received a Historic Mandate for, the largest Mass Deportation Program in American History. Polling shows overwhelming Public Support for getting the Illegals out, and that is exactly what we will do. As Commander-in-Chief, I will always protect and defend the Heroes of ICE and Border Patrol, whose work has already resulted in the Most Secure Border in American History. Anyone who assaults or attacks an ICE or Border Agent will do hard time in jail. Those who are here illegally should either self deport using the CBP Home App or, ICE will find you and remove you. Saving America is not negotiable!”