Merrick Garland urged to block Texas’s ‘extreme anti-immigrant state bill’
A group of Texas and Hispanic Democrats have demanded the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, block “the most extreme anti-immigrant state bill in the United States”, which was signed by Governor Greg Abbott on Monday.
The Texas law will allow state law enforcement to arrest migrants deemed to have entered the US illegally and empower judges to order deportations. It is set to go into effect next year.
“This legislation authorises state law enforcement officers to arrest and detain people and state judges to order mass deportations,” read a letter to Garland signed by a group led by Joaquín Castro, a congressman from San Antonio, and including 11 other Texas representatives, Nanette Diaz Barragán of California (chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus) and eight other Hispanic Democrats.
“This bill is set to be the most extreme anti-immigrant state bill in the United States,” the letter said. “It is clearly pre-empted by federal law and when it goes into effect will likely result in racial profiling, significant due process violations, and unlawful arrests of citizens, lawful permanent residents, and others.”
In a post to social media, Castro linked passage of the law to extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric deployed on the campaign trail by Donald Trump, the 91-times criminally charged former president who dominates Republican presidential primary polling.
Castro said: “Forty-eight hours after Trump accused immigrants of ‘poisoning the blood of our country’, Governor Abbott is signing a dangerous new law targeting immigrants and everyone who looks like them.”
Trump made the comments at a rally in New Hampshire on Saturday, then complained of an “invasion” in Nevada on Sunday. Observers, opponents and historians were quick to point out the authoritarian roots of such rhetoric, which Trump has used before. Many made direct comparisons to Adolf Hitler, who used similar language about Jews in his autobiography and manifesto, Mein Kampf.
On Monday night, a New York Republican congresswoman, Nicole Malliotakis, attempted to defend Trump on television.
“When he said ‘they are poisoning’, I think he was talking about the Democratic policies,” Malliotakis claimed. “I think he was talking about the open border policy.
“You know what’s actually poisoning America is the amount of fentanyl that’s coming over the open border. And so this is a serious issue, and I think that’s what he’s talking about.”
Her host, Abby Phillip of CNN, said Trump “was saying that the immigrants who are coming in … they’re poisoning the blood of the nation”.
Malliotakis insisted: “He never said ‘immigrants are poisoning,’ though … He didn’t say the word ‘immigrants’.”
In Congress, immigration has once again become a political football, Senate Republicans holding up aid to Ukraine in search of concessions from Democrats.
In Brownsville, Texas, on Monday, Abbott signed the new bill and said: “[Joe] Biden’s deliberate inaction has left Texas to fend for itself.”
Abbott is also among Republican governors who have forcibly transferred migrants to Democratic-run states.
In their letter to Garland, the Democrats led by Castro urged the attorney general to “assert your authority over federal immigration and foreign policy and pursue legal action, as appropriate, to stop this unconstitutional and dangerous legislation from going into effect”.