April 4, 2024

Developments

In an hour-long hearing in New Orleans, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments about Texas’s controversial state law S.B. 4, which would allow state officials to arrest, imprison, and deport migrants for illegal entry. The law raises the specter of states enforcing their own immigration laws, and of Texas law enforcement profiling people and demanding they prove their status anywhere in the state.

“Now, to be fair, maybe Texas went too far,” the state’s solicitor-general surprisingly said. “What Texas has done here, they have tried to develop a statute that goes up to the line of the Supreme Court precedent but allows Texas to protect the border.”

The Texas official, Aaron Neilson, said that when arrested migrants are found guilty and agree to be deported instead of jailed, Texas authorities will hand them over to U.S. officials at border ports of entry, rather than carrying out their own deportations into Mexico. Neilson “then stumbled to explain how that is different from what is happening at the border now,” the Associated Press reported.

It is not clear when the appeals court will rule on S.B. 4’s constitutionality; the same three-judge panel already stayed the law while its deliberations continue. Regardless of the outcome, the challenge to the law—led by the federal Justice Department, joined with a suit brought by the ACLU and local organizations—is almost certain to go to the Supreme Court.

Acacia Coronado, “Texas Asks Court to Decide if the State’s Migrant Arrest Law Went Too Far” (Associated Press, Associated Press, April 3, 2024).
Raquel Martin, “Texas Lawyer Questions if State ‘Went Too Far’ in Immigration Case” (Border Report, April 3, 2024).

A CNN analysis recalled that Texas’s goal is probably to get a now more conservative Supreme Court to revisit a 2012 ruling that struck down a harsh law that Arizona passed in 2010.

Devan Cole, “Texas Immigration Controversy Rekindles Fight Over Arizona’s ‘Show Me Your Papers’ Law” (CNN, April 3, 2024).

A San Diego NBC affiliate added more detail to the account, summarized in a March 29 CBP release, of a 24-year-old Guatemalan woman’s fatal March 21 fall from the border wall between Tijuana and San Diego. The woman had been hanging from the wall and yelling for help for about 24 minutes before she let go and fell to her death from the 30-foot, Trump-era structure.

A fire truck initially showed up at the wrong side of the wall, and was unable to arrive at the woman’s location in time. The woman fell before fire department personnel arrived and about a minute after a Border Patrol agent left the scene “to meet with other agents and coordinate the transportation of other migrants apprehended in the area.”

A spokesperson for the San Diego Fire Department said, “CBP did the right thing by telling us the height of the wall at that initial location, but CBP did not provide SDFD with the best access point to the patient.” CBP will release body-worn camera footage of the incident.

Dave Summers, “Cbp, Sdfd Release New Details After Deadly Us-Mexico Border Fence Fall” (NBC San Diego, April 4, 2024).

Migrants are reporting abuse at the hands of Mexican National Guard personnel whom Mexico’s government recently deployed to sites east of San Diego where asylum seekers attempt to cross and turn themseves in to Border Patrol. A woman from Ecuador told Border Report that guardsmen separated women from the group with which she was traveling, groped them, and demanded bribes of $2,500 per person. Others spoke of demands for $800 and theft of belongings.

Salvador Rivera, “Migrants Accuse Mexico’s National Guard of Abuse and Theft” (Border Report, April 3, 2024).

“He did not speak with any of us, so it was kind of shocking seeing that he had said that he had spoke with us, and misinforming people on live TV,” said the relative of a Michigan woman killed earlier month, apparently by an undocumented individual, whose case was part of an April 2 Donald Trump speech. The candidate told a Michigan crowd that he spoke to Ruby García’s family, but the family says that is false.

Anjali Huynh, “Contradicting Trump, Ruby Garcia’s Sister Says He Never Contacted Family” (The New York Times, April 3, 2024).

Trump’s repeated citing of “migrant crime,” Greg Sargent observed at the New Republic, “is straight from the authoritarian playbook. As The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum has noted: ‘The repetition of the phrase ‘migrant crime’ is a tactic stolen from [far-right Hungary Prime Minister] Victor Orban, who used to use ‘Gypsy crime’ in the same way.’”

Greg Sargent, “Trump’s Ugly, Hateful Rants in Michigan Should Be Covered as a Scandal” (The New Republic, April 3, 2024).

A Texas National Guard soldier participating in “Operation Lone Star” is in custody after a March 31 arrest for attempting to smuggle a migrant in his vehicle near Eagle Pass.

Ali Bradley, “Texas National Guard Member Charged With Human Smuggling” (NewsNation, April 3, 2024).

EFE reported that a drought has reduced to a trickle the Suchiate River, which forms part of the border between Guatemala and Chiapas near Tapachula, Mexico, easing migrants’ crossings.

“Migrantes Aprovechan la Sequia del Rio Suchiate para Cruzar a Mexico” (EFE, Milenio (Mexico), April 3, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

PBS NewsHour spoke to a smuggler in southern Mexico who “charges up to $21,000 per person for longer journeys and says his network has moved 50,000 people into the U.S. since 2021.”