Editor’s Note: Lawrence Downes is a writer and director in New York. The ideas expressed in this commentary are his own. View , more opinion , on CNN.
It’s been a fortnight of , whiplash , for folks wondering whether Texas is going to be getting its own international policy. That is, whether it will be allowed to enforce , SB 4, the extraordinary anti- immigration , laws that Gov. Greg Abbott , signed , past December. It empowers the state’s police and judges to jail, switch off and punish individuals suspected of crossing its borders improperly.
The legal issues raised by SB 4 are kicking around the national authorities. Is Texas turn a national civil immigration offence into a condition crime? Next month a district judge said , no, next the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals said , yes. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said , no , and then , no again, but on Tuesday the Supreme Court said it would n’t stand in the appeals court’s way,  , so yes. But later that night a three- judge section of the pertains judge said, waited a moment,  , no. They heard claims by Zoom on Wednesday.
For now the answer is no, Texas ca n’t throw out the Constitution and more than a century of settled law that says control over immigration belongs exclusively to the federal government. But whatever the 5th Circuit and Supreme Court decide second, the problem for President Joe Biden is what to do today.
Biden is the one who has been vilified for not stopping what Abbott, original President Donald Trump and some falsely call an immigrant “invasion”. Despite his , small approval , rating , on the matter,  , Biden , remains the one who is truly responsible for immigration plan while ideologues like Abbott and Trump denigrate refugees with , violent , and , dehumanizing language , and whip themselves and the public into a nationalist frenzy.
If Texas is going to act this way, Biden should step away and surge resources to the border — no more troops, but Department of Justice investigators and legal- rights lawyers, to be ready to defend immigrants and brownish- tanned Texans ( and Arizonans and New Mexicans passing through ) against the profiling and different civil- rights violations that are sure to follow in SB 4’s wake. He should do more to defend hospital seekers , at the southern border,  , who deserve protection and due process.
And he should  , fulfill a campaign promise , and pull the plug on any partnerships that Texas sheriffs ‘ and police departments have with the Department of Homeland Security through the federal , 287 ( g ) program, which deputizes local law enforcement for immigration duties. Texas, of all locations, should not be the Biden administration’s partner in these extremely chaotic frontier activities.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor was best when she warned in , dissent , this week that SB 4″ will destroy the historic federal- condition balance of power and sow chaos”. The law, she said, threatened to “disrupt sensitive foreign relations, frustrate the protection of individuals fleeing persecution, hamper active federal enforcement efforts, undermine federal agencies ‘ ability to detect and monitor imminent security threats, and deter noncitizens from reporting abuse or trafficking”.
Even without SB 4, Abbott has made Texas a chaos agent. He has been chewing up public lands for a DIY border wall and illegally , fortifying the Rio Grande , with shipping containers,  , razor wire and floating saw blades. He has used state guard troops to seize a , public park , in the border city of Eagle Pass, creating what extremists are calling a “new Alamo” and keeping out the Border Patrol, with , tragic results.
The threat in Texas of armed vigilantism from people fired up by dehumanizing language and warnings of , an “illegal invasion” is real. Rhetoric became reality in , 2019 in El Paso, when a gunman who had swallowed those lies shot nearly 50 people at a Walmart, killing 23, nearly all of them Mexican- Americans. The FBI said it , disrupted a militia plot , to “go to war” on the Texas- Mexico border just last month.
If the courts end up giving Texas a green light to go its own way on immigration — which is, as , District Judge David Ezra , said , when he first blocked SB 4,” a notion that is antithetical to the Constitution and has been unequivocally rejected by federal courts since the Civil War”— it seems all too clear that chaos and violence , are likely to follow.  , As The New York Times reported on Wednesday, Republican copycats in other states are already lining up , to go rogue , on immigration, too.
Biden’s own immigration message has  , gotten much harsher , lately , as he seeks a second term. He may not , suggest , that all immigrants are dangerous invaders — as , crime data and evidence , resoundingly show that they are not. But he has been trying to get the Republicans to join him in getting tough. His message to the GOP and the country is: Yes, let’s definitely crack down on immigrants in a big way and hire more Border Patrol agents and seal that border shut.
Biden even made an awkward and disturbing reference in his State of the Union address to Laken Riley who, in his words, had been “killed by an illegal”. Riley, a 22- year- old nursing student at the University of Georgia, was fatally beaten last month. A suspect from Venezuela, apparently an undocumented immigrant, has been charged in her death.
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It was painful to see. Biden regrettably took the bait of the Republican troll Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who had demanded before the speech that he” say her name”. He accepted the challenge and essentially did what she ordered him to do.
Biden did the country no favors with , his ugly — even if accidental — word choice. If he truly means well — if he still believes in the spirit of American welcome and tolerance that he evokes in his speeches, if he still holds any of the strongly pro- immigrant convictions that he voiced during his 2020 campaign— then he should show it.
The rap on Biden from Abbott, Trump and their MAGA allies is that he refuses to use his executive power to fix , immigration. They have been trying to bully him into ending asylum and taking other harsh actions on his own. His answer should be: Very well, then. Let SB 4 be the line in the sand, to steal a phrase from Texas ‘ Alamo , mythology. He should step up to stop , Texas and any other state from turning immigration into a dangerous free- for- all, defend immigrants from Abbott’s brutal recklessness and reaffirm federal sovereignty over a sound and just , immigration system.
