Usurping federal power to establish and enforce immigration laws, Republican Texas Governor and man who seems to hate just about every group he’s not a part of Greg Abbott signed a new state law that gives local and state law enforcement more powers to arrest, detain and deport undocumented migrants in the state, the Associated Press reports.
Claiming without evidence the law would reduce illegal border crossings by “well over 50%, maybe 75%,” Abbott’s law would demand any suspected undocumented individual could submit to a state or local judge’s deportation order–oh, did I fail to mention he’s giving his state and local judges unprecedented powers to deport people, too?–or the individual would be turned over to federal officials, who would charge the individual with a misdemeanor and deport them, which could lead to stiffer sentences if caught illegally in the US again.
This is clearly an effort to get local law enforcement to harass migrants, both documented and undocumented, due to the ambiguous language that allows local cops to arrest anyone they “suspect” of being in the US illegally, whether they have cause to question people for other reasons besides “lookin’ Mexican.” It’s the most blatant overreach of a state governor on immigration since Arizona’s 2010 “Show Me Your Papers” law.