Why the new Texas immigration law won’t work
Conn Carroll
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Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) signed a new law Monday that would make crossing the Texas-Mexico border a state crime, empowering Texas law enforcement to arrest and detain illegal border-crossers.
Considering all the misery President Joe Biden’s border crisis has inflicted on communities throughout the state, including most painfully on border communities, Abbott’s effort is understandable.
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Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a prayer of actually solving the crisis, and all you need to understand why is to look at the video coming out of Eagle Pass, Texas, from Monday night.
Thousands of migrants can be seen standing in a field illuminated by floodlights just north of the border with Mexico. They are patiently waiting to be transported to the local Border Patrol facility, where they will be screened to see if they are a public security threat. If authorities can’t find their name in any criminal database, they will be released into the country with a piece of paper saying they should report to an immigration judge seven or eight years from now. Until then, they are free to roam about the country as they see fit.
Abbott’s new law would empower Texas law enforcement to arrest each of these migrants as they are released by the Border Patrol. Which sounds great on paper, but then what are they supposed to do with them?
The new law makes it a Class B misdemeanor carrying a punishment of up to six months in jail for crossing the Texas-Mexico border between ports of entry. The law allows a judge to drop those charges, but only if the defendant agrees to return to Mexico voluntarily. If the migrant refuses and serves six months in jail, he or she can be charged with a second-degree felony with a punishment of two to 20 years in prison, which also can be dismissed if the migrant voluntarily agrees to return to Mexico.
But again, Texas has no way to force immigrants to go back to Mexico. Abbott would need to make an agreement with authorities in Mexico to accept custody of immigrants convicted of illegally crossing the border. This isn’t necessarily impossible, but Abbott has no such agreement now.
Even then, it would take a massive amount of resources to arrest and detain the thousands of migrants Biden is releasing into Texas every day. Texas would have to hold these migrants in cells long enough for a judge to hear their case. That would take days for each migrant. And then, what if each migrant just accepted the six-month misdemeanor? Many of them have spent months and thousands of dollars coming here, so what is another six months in an American jail compared to the horrors of traversing Mexican cartel-controlled jungle and desert? Does Texas have the resources to hold thousands of migrants for six months?
No, it does not. The sad reality is migrants will keep crossing the southern border illegally as long as they are rewarded with access to the United States for doing so. Six months in a U.S. jail simply is not deterrent enough to keep migrants from crossing the border. Only by denying migrants entry into the U.S. can we stop more migrants from attempting the same trip.
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Abbott is in a tough spot. He is trying to protect his constituents from a crisis that its author will not admit he caused, nor will he do anything to end it.
Until there is another president in office, until the White House is occupied by a leader willing to make it a foreign policy priority to force other countries to take back immigrants, unfortunately, the crisis will only get worse.