Immigration activists demonstrated outside the Texas state Capitol in Austin on Saturday over a controversial new law that could be implemented in a matter of days.
Hundreds of people from across the state rallied to oppose Senate Bill 4, which would, among other provisions, allow police to detain anyone they think may have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.
Campaigners have argued that the law could lead to abuses of power and allow law enforcement officers to target ethnic minorities.
"Forty percent of the population in this state is Latino, Mexicano," Jessie Fuentes, of the Eagle Pass Border Coalition, one of the organizing groups, told the march, according to local news channel KEYE. "It's our people."
"I think people overall in the border region—possibly throughout the whole Texas border region—need to be aware of what this law really is, what the power that is going to give officers, and most importantly to know that they have rights," Alan Lizarraga, communications coordinator for Border Network for Human Rights, another organizer, told KFOX.
Proponents of the law say it is needed to help address an influx of illegal immigration across the border and deter associated crimes, including the trafficking of drugs. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics, there were nearly 2.5 million encounters with migrants at the border in the year ending in September, 1.5 million of which occurred along the Texas part of the border.
While SB 4 allows for officers to detain potential illegal immigrants, it stipulates that arrests cannot take place at schools, places of worship, health care facilities and those that provide medical examinations for sexual assault survivors.
However, it also allows judges to expel illegal immigrants who are convicted of an offense, or drop any charges against them if they agree to return to their country of origin voluntarily.
The bill was passed in November and signed by Texas Governor Greg Abbott on December 18. It was due to go into effect on March 7 but has faced several legal challenges and appeals before ending up at the U.S. Supreme Court.
On March 4, the Supreme Court issued a temporary stay until March 13 while it considers whether the state should be allowed to enforce the law.
The new law is one of several recent attempts by Texas to curb illegal immigration into the state. In 2021, Abbott launched Operation Lone Star, which has so far detained more than a half-million illegal immigrants.
The installation of razor wire along parts of the border provoked criticism from human rights groups. The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for Border Patrol agents to remove the wire in January, though Abbott vowed to put up more.
In response to the ruling, Abbott declared that Texas had a "constitutional authority to defend and protect itself" against "invasion." The move was supported by Republican governors across the country.
Abbott and other Republicans have criticized President Joe Biden's handling of the situation at the border. Relations between Texas and the greater U.S. became strained after the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the federal government, prompting fresh calls for the state to secede.
Sarah Cruz, a border and immigrant rights strategist at the American Civil Liberties Union, told rally participants that politicians "have repeatedly used false narratives about our communities to justify pushbacks at the border, family separations, increased racial profiling and the instalment of razor wires and boobies that have caused drownings and hundreds of injuries."
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Aleks Phillips is a Newsweek U.S. News Reporter based in London. His focus is on U.S. politics and the environment. ... Read more
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