Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is pushing back on Texas’s new law that makes illegal immigration a state crime.
While the federal government is responsible for immigration enforcement, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the state’s hand was forced because of the Biden administration’s “deliberate inaction.”
“Senate Bill 4 … creates a criminal offense for illegal entry into this state from a foreign nation,” Abbott’s office said. “The law cracks down on repeated attempts to enter Texas by creating the offense of illegal reentry and penalizes offenders with up to 20 years in prison. It also provides the mechanism to order an offender to return to the foreign nation from which the person entered or attempted to enter this state. The law provides civil immunity and indemnification for local and state government officials, employees, and contractors for lawsuits resulting from the enforcement of these provisions.”
New laws I signed today in Brownsville will take #OperationLoneStar to the next level:
— Gov. Greg Abbott (@GovAbbott) December 19, 2023
✅ Criminalize illegal entry into Texas
✅ Fund additional wall construction & support @TxDPS border security efforts
✅ Increase penalties for human smuggling
More: https://t.co/RuJcCNXdr3 pic.twitter.com/iPi7NO6oaU
López Obrador called the law “inhumane” and said Mexico’s foreign ministry “is already working on the process to challenge” the measure.
Abbott "wants to win popularity with these measures, but he's not going to win anything, but he'll lose favor, because in Texas there are so many Mexicans and migrants,” he argued, according to Reuters.
Mexico previously challenged the buoys Texas installed in the Rio Grande to stem the flow of illegal immigration. The Justice Department also sued Texas, and the state has been ordered to remove them.