‘Maybe Texas went too far’ with immigration law, state lawyer tells federal court

An attorney defending Texas’ controversial immigration law told a federal appeals court on Wednesday that state legislators may have gone “too far” when they passed a controversial immigration law last year.

The law, known as SB4, makes entering Texas illegally a state crime and allows state judges to order immigrants to be deported.

At 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals, Texas Solicitor General Aaron Nielson said that when designing the law, lawmakers sought to go “up to the line” in terms of what Supreme Court precedent allows states to do.

But, Nielson added: “Now, to be fair, maybe Texas went too far.”

Nielson is arguing before a circuit panel that has already paused the law from going to effect while the court further examines the statute. Nielson sought to downplay how sweeping the law was and argued it did not interfere with federal authority on immigration.

On Wednesday, Nielson said that, under the Texas Attorney General’s office interpretation of the state law, the migrants subject to state court deportation orders would be turned over to federal immigration authorities at border ports and then the federal officials would determine whether they should be released by into the United States while they await further proceedings.

Chief Circuit Judge Priscilla Richman, a conservative judge who was the key swing vote in the 2-1 panel decision last week that temporarily paused the law, was skeptical of Nielson’s attempts to limit the state law’s scope.

“What has the statute accomplished?” She asked Nielson.

An attorney for the Justice Department, which brought one of the lawsuits challenging the Texas statute, urged the appeals court not to depart from its previous ruling blocking the law.

“Nothing that has happened this morning provides any basis for deviating from the analysis set out in this Court’s stay opinion,” DOJ attorney Daniel Tenny told the appeals court Wednesday.

This story is breaking and will be updated.