US appeals court pauses controversial Texas immigration law again

WASHINGTON

A Texas law allowing police to arrest and deport migrants has again been put on hold by a federal appeals court just hours after the US Supreme Court allowed it to take effect.

The 2-1 ruling from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals came late Tuesday night came as the court prepares to hear arguments on Wednesday. It is unclear if any arrests were made in the intervening hours.

Senate Bill 4, or SB4 as the law is known, was signed into law by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in December as a drastic measure to end what he calls a migrant "invasion" from Latin America. The bill allows state and local authorities to arrest anyone suspected of being an undocumented immigrant in Texas.

Mexico had condemned the Supreme Court’s decision to lift the hold, vowing to not cooperate with Texas authorities on any deportations they attempt to execute.

Mexico “condemns the entry into force of Texas law SB4, which seeks to stop the flow of migrants by criminalizing them, and encouraging the separation of families, discrimination and racial profiling that violate the human rights of the migrant community," the Mexican Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"Mexico will not accept, under any circumstances, repatriations by the State of Texas," it added.

Immigration authorities have long been held exclusively by the federal government, casting into question the constitutionality of SB4.

The US Supreme Court had earlier Tuesday allowed the hardline law to come into force while appeals play out. The ruling saw all three of the court's liberal justices – Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor – vote in dissent.

Sotomayor wrote in a scathing dissent opinion that the top court's decision "invites further chaos and crisis in immigration enforcement."

"Texas passed a law that directly regulates the entry and removal of noncitizens and explicitly instructs its state courts to disregard any ongoing federal immigration proceedings. That law upends the federal-state balance of power that has existed for over a century, in which the National Government has had exclusive authority over entry and removal of noncitizens," she wrote.