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Court fight brews over constitutionality of Texas governor's border arrests
by Jolie McCullough, Texas TribuneAfter months of preliminary courtroom skirmishes, the lines are being drawn for a full-blown legal battle to determine if hundreds of migrants have been illegally arrested under Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security crackdown.
A judge in Austin laid the groundwork last week when she ruled that one Ecuadorian migrant’s arrest by Texas state troopers for allegedly trespassing was unconstitutional because it was part of a state initiative meant to usurp the federal government’s job of enforcing immigration laws.
It took less than a day after state District Judge Jan Soifer’s decision for a group of defense attorneys to rush to the same courthouse seeking dismissal of charges against nearly 450 other migrants swept up in the governor’s operation.
Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton have decried Soifer’s ruling as an overstep by a liberal Austin judge, but initially had no clear legal avenue to challenge it. The mass filing by Texas RioGrande Legal Aid for the hundreds of migrants it represents opens the door for the state to jump into the fray.
Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2022/01/21/texas-border-migrant-arrests-travis-county/