Mexico is warning a federal US court that if its judges permit a controversial Texas immigration law to take effect, the two nations would experience “substantial tension” that would have far-reaching consequences for US-Mexico relations.
In a friend-of-the-court brief filed Thursday with the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals, lawyers for Mexico said relations with the US would be strained.
“Enforcement of SB 4 would inappropriately burden the uniform and predictable sovereign-to-sovereign relations between Mexico and the United States, by criminalizing the unauthorized entry of noncitizens into Texas from outside the county and creating diverging removal requirements between and among individual states and the national government,” they wrote in the brief.
“Enforcement of SB 4 would also interfere with Mexico’s right to determine its own policies regarding entry into its territory, undermine U.S.-Mexico collaboration on a legal migration framework and border management, and hinder U.S.-Mexico trade,” the attorneys told the court.
Signed into law by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in December, the law makes entering Texas illegally a state crime and allows state judges to order immigrants to be deported. US immigration enforcement, generally, is a function of the federal government.
The 5th Circuit is currently considering whether to allow Texas to enforce Senate Bill 4 while it weighs the larger question of whether the law violates the US Constitution. A three-judge panel at the appeals court put the law back on hold late Tuesday after the Supreme Court cleared the way for it to go into effect for a short period earlier that day.
Briefs like the one filed by Mexico, which is technically called an amicus brief, are submitted by non-parties to offer a court expertise and…
Read the full article here
