Eric Gay/AP Photo
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, center, speaks during a news conference along the Rio Grande, August 21, 2023, in Eagle Pass, Texas.
There is no position more powerful than that of a Republican state legislator in Texas. Once elected, you can stop liberal cities from enacting ordinances that protect workers. Once elected, you can override the federal government’s constitutional power to set immigration policy. No other level of government matters to the current Republican members of the legislature or, for that matter, to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who is avidly endeavoring to amass more power than any governor in American history.
As Gus Bova of the Texas Observer reports in an article the Prospect co-published today, the Republican majority in the legislature’s lower house on Tuesday passed on a party-line vote and sent to Abbott a bill—which Abbott had requested—that grants state and local police and the state courts the power to enforce immigration law. Under its terms, any noncitizen who enters Texas without legal authorization is subject to arrest by local police and an immediate court appearance in which he or she must choose between immediate deportation or six months in jail. If the immigrant opts for the six-month imprisonment, he or she will then be returned to the court and given the same choice again.
There’s just a small hitch with this bill about to become a law: It’s not constitutional. As recently as 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that immigration policy and law is under the purview solely of the federal government. Such niceties are of no matter, apparently, to Texas Republicans.
After all, earlier this year they enacted a bill that enables them to negate laws passed by those liberal cities—Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, El Paso, and their ilk—that exceed the standards set by the legislature in such matters as workplace safety and environmental protections. Under the terms of this law, commonly referred to as the “Death Star” statute, any business can haul a city into court if it enforces one of its own ordinances, and be assured that it will be exempted from having to comply with it.
On August 30, a Texas judge struck down the Death Star law, but as her ruling was immediately appealed by Ken Paxton, the state’s Republican attorney general (who in other matters appears to consider himself immune from compliance with the state’s criminal codes), it has nonetheless gone into effect, pending, presumably, the ruling of higher courts.
At the rate they’re going, the next move from Abbott and the Republican state senators and House members will be to abolish elections for federal and local offices, since the only legitimate level of government in Texas is the one that extreme-right Republicans control (and can keep controlling through their gerrymandering): the state.
As Republicans nationally increasingly cling to power by subverting majority rule, their Texan comrades have come up with a whole new way to suppress majorities: stripping power from any level of government they don’t control. Even as you read this, foreheads are likely being smacked at the Republican National Committee: Why didn’t we think of this?!
