AUSTIN, Texas – A bill before the Texas legislature would create a vigilante force to patrol the US-Mexico border, drawing sharp criticism from civil rights groups and raising questions about how far the state’s conservative lawmakers are willing to challenge federal immigration controls. enforcement.
billwhich was written by Rep. Matt Schaefer, a Republican, will allow US citizens or legal permanent residents without felony convictions to join a volunteer police force called the “Border Protection Unit.”
Schaefer’s bill cites “deadly transnational cartel activity” and the trafficking of “lethal amounts of opioids such as fentanyl” as reasons for the urgent need to recruit amateurs to perform part-time border police duties, but is almost certainly a response to concerns about immigration not valid either.
The proposed legislation would authorize voluntary border patrols to “intercept and repel” people trying to cross the border outside of ports of entry. Volunteers of these units do not automatically have the power of arrest, but they can get training and authorization from the governor.
Civil rights groups, immigration advocates and Democratic lawmakers said at a press conference Wednesday that the proposed legislation would target people of color living at the border, as well as migrants fleeing violence in their home countries.
“This law criminalizes our very existence,” said Alicia Torres from the criminal justice reform group Leadership Grassroots.
The proposed legislation would create “the secret police of Texas,” said Democratic state Rep. Gene Wu. “I know who will be listed as enemies. They will look like us. We are the ones who look like all the devils.”
Forty-eight members of the state House of Representatives have signed on as co-authors of House Bill 20. House Speaker Dade Phelan supports the Bill, describing it as “Bold” and “innovative,” which means it is all but certain to pass the room below.
It also has a strong chance of passing the Senate, which is led by hyper-conservative Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick.
The two Republicans have clashed, however, over Phelan’s disinterest in cheering together Patrick’s culture war fixation. As the session draws to a close, it is possible that Patrick will let HB 20 die to deprive Phelan of legislative achievements that will appeal to the Republican base, according to Rice University political scientist Mark Jones.
“That is the issue this session that Phelan will be dealing with [in] some way to the right of Dan Patrick, to protect his moderate colleagues from criticism of not being conservative enough,” Jones said.
Right-wing volunteer patrol groups and militias have been coming to the US-Mexico border in search of illegal migrants and drug runners for decades, since a 1977 publicity stunt organized by Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.
But creating a volunteer police force targeting immigrants would give unprecedented official backing to border security hobbyists, and put the state of Texas on a collision course with the federal government. The Supreme Court has historically limited the state’s role in immigration enforcement, which is a federal responsibility.
Texas, however, has invested more than a decade and billions of dollars in the state’s immigration enforcement program, with dubious and dishonest results.
Starting in 2021, the country is sending about 10,000 National Guard members to the border as part of an initiative called Operation Lone Star. Texas has prosecuted thousands of migrants on state criminal charges under the program.
The proposed vigilante law will push Texas so far into federal immigration enforcement that opponents see it as a ploy to force a legal reckoning on the issue, with the aim of getting it before the more conservative Supreme Court that has revoked the right to abortion. and century-old gun restrictions.
“They are trying to create an immigration system in Texas,” said Fernando García, director of the Border Network for Human Rights. “It is illegal. What’s next? They’re going to enforce IRS law?”
The proposed law states that Article 1, Section 10 of the US Constitution gives the governor of Texas the ability to declare a “state of invasion,” which allows the state to use its own forces to fight invaders.
But “invasion,” for purposes of legal collection in federal court, almost always refers to a military attack by a foreign country, rather than migrants or drug traffickers.
Creating a volunteer police force to enforce immigration in response to a planned invasion would make it legally untenable, even with a conservative Supreme Court, according to Jones, the political scientist. If Governor Greg Abbott (R) were to sign HB 20 into law, the courts would block it before Texas could implement it.
“If it passes,” Jones said, “it will go on the list of laws coming out of the Texas legislature, ordered immediately and never heard from again, because they were passed for symbolic reasons.”