EDITORIAL: Challenge to state migrant arrest law should be expedited

Human rights activists were ready to challenge Texas’ latest state immigration law. The day after Gov. Greg Abbott came to the Rio Grande Valley — his favorite place to make his anti-immigration statements — to sign three border security bills into law, in front a section of border fence in Brownsville, a lawsuit was filed.

Let us hope the courts recognize the importance of this issue, and review the case just as quickly.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Texas Civil Rights Project, along with El Paso County, filed a federal lawsuit to challenge one of the three laws, Senate Bill 4, which authorizes local law enforcement agencies to arrest and deport suspected illegal border crossers. In addition, members of Congress and others have petitioned the Justice Department to file its own lawsuit against the law, which calls for local enforcement of federal immigrant law — a jurisdictional conflict that the U.S. Supreme Court already has ruled several times isn’t allowed.

The most recent ruling was in 2012, in response to a similar law the state of Arizona enacted in 2010. The court invalidated the law as unconstitutional, asserting that immigration is a federal matter.

However, this is the latest in a swarm of new actions defying old rulings on topics ranging from voting rights, segregation and immigration, hoping the current Trump majority, which already has shown at times that it is more willing to support Republican Party positions than defend the Constitution and respect previous court decisions.

The law doesn’t take effect until March, but that is a short time for the case to move up the ladder from the first-level courts to the appeals court and on up to the Supreme Court, unless the case is expedited and the high court recognizes the importance of the issue and takes it earlier — if it chooses to hear it at all.

Obviously, it should settle the conflict between Abbott and his supporters, who claim the same states’ rights that once defended slavery, and conflicts that arise when officers don’t have the jurisdiction regarding enforcement measures they are asked to perform.

Enforcement will be problematic. Even Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety and staunch Abbott supporter, has acknowledged it would be “almost impossible” to enforce the law unless an officer witnessed the encroachment or had evidence of illegal crossing.

Sheriff Tom Schmerber of Maverick County, where Abbott placed buoys hanging nets and razor wire to entangle and cut crossers, complained about the new law and other border security measures.

“It’s taken away manpower from the security that we’re supposed to be doing here in the county,” he said. “We don’t want to do it, and it’s going to be impossible.”

Moreover, officers have a short window of enforcement. Unauthorized entry is illegal, but most current immigrants immediately look for officers and request asylum. Both U.S. and international law recognize those requests, and once accepted those migrants have legal status.

Abbott and others will only continue to challenge our laws and human rights until the court renders a final decision on their authority. The sooner that decision is made, the better.