Texas Can Arrest and Deport People Who Illegally Cross at Mexico Border, Court Says | UNW

A federal appeals court cleared the way on Friday for Texas to act on an expansive 2023 state law that empowers state and local police officers to arrest migrants who cross illegally from Mexico, the latest development in a long-running case that could have far-reaching implications for immigration enforcement in the United States.

In a 10-to-7 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the law, known as Senate Bill 4, and lifted a temporary injunction that had been in place since 2024.

That year, the U.S. Supreme Court had briefly allowed the law to go into effect and returned the case to the 5th Circuit, which quickly put the law on hold. In July 2025, a three-member panel of the 5th Circuit upheld the 2024 injunction. Texas has since continued to press its case and, on Friday, a majority of the full 5th Circuit sided with the state and removed the injunction.

The court, however, did not address the underlying question of whether the law unconstitutionally infringes on the federal government’s power to set and enforce immigration law.

The ruling does not take effect until May 15, and the challengers, which include civil rights and immigrants’ groups and the El Paso County government, have indicated that they intend to appeal the decision.

“This fight is far from over,” said Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs, in a statement.

The Texas Legislature had passed the law in 2023, at a time when border crossings were surging. The Biden administration challenged the law, but the Trump administration later withdrew the federal government’s participation in the lawsuit.

Texas lawmakers have said that they devised S.B. 4 to closely follow federal law, which already prohibits illegal entry. The measure effectively allows state law enforcement officers across Texas to conduct what, until now, has been the work of the U.S. Border Patrol. The law also allows state and local judges to order the removal of noncitizens.

Critics have said the law could lead to increased racial profiling and the detention of people hundreds of miles from the border. The Mexican government has also said that it would not accept any people deported by local or state agencies.

Texas had argued that its law was necessary to deter migrants from crossing illegally. The Trump administration has ramped up federal immigration enforcement, leading to a sharp decline in border crossings.

But the fight over the law could still have broader implications. Legal experts have said that the case is likely to end up before the Supreme Court. If it does, it could allow the court’s conservative majority to revisit a landmark 2012 decision that upheld the broad power of the federal government to set immigration policy, and it could affect recent efforts by Republican-controlled state legislatures to create state-level systems of border enforcement.

The Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, who is running to unseat Senator John Cornyn, celebrated the appeal court’s decision as a “major win for public safety and law and order.”

Edna Yang, co-executive director of American Gateways, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement that the decision would leave “immigrant families across Texas to live in fear of a law that a prior panel rightly found unconstitutional.”