Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s may have lost his battles against President Joe Biden’s immigration policies, but it’s possible he actually won the war to empower President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportation.
It was only six days in the Biden’s term when Paxton first sued the administration. That time it was because Biden put a 100-day moratorium on deportations while the Department of Homeland Security worked on new deadlines for high priority targets. The move was a promise Biden made during campaigning, seeking to halt the deportation of non-violent undocumented immigrants that escalated under Trump.
This was followed by an order from the Department of Justice to narrow the focus of state deportation sweeps to felons and other undocumented migrants that posed specific dangers. Texas and Louisiana sued the Biden Administration, claiming that the order was detrimental to the states’ economies. Their argument hinged on the idea that the mere presence of any undocumented immigrants at all was inherently a drain on health care and other aspects of life.
This argument has never held up under scrutiny. Studies consistently show that undocumented immigrants commit less crime than citizens and put more money into the economy than they take out (contrary to racist and nationalist talking points, undocumented immigrants do not qualify for most welfare programs). However, that was not what cost Paxton victory at the U.S. Supreme Court.
Instead, the court wondered if any state could now defy a federal order simply by claiming loss of income. Ultimately, the court ruled 8-1 that Texas and Louisiana had no standing as the president gets to make the rules as head of the executive branch and therefore the authority behind deportations.
That legal precedent is likely to be used for the more draconian policies planned by Trump when he takes office again in January. The U.S. Supreme Court increasingly signals that it has no plans to be the breaks on policies that fall directly under executive control.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if litigation ends up being a smaller part of immigration advocacy in this administration,” J Anna Cabot, associate professor at the University of Houston Immigration Clinic recently told The Houston Chronicle. “They’ve been signaling pretty strongly on these issues.”
If the U.S. Supreme Court, which is a 6-3 conservative majority with three justices appointed by Trump, would not stand up against Biden for his immigration policies, it’s unlikely they will for Trump either unless Trump runs afoul of very clear laws set by congress. For all that Paxton’s legal bumbling cost anti-immigration advocates wins over the last four years, it serves to set the president above state considerations when it comes to immigration enforcement.
Trump is certain to use that power to his advantage as much as possible. In places where his actions run clearly afoul of the Constitution, such as his Muslim ban in the first term, he will be stymied. Everything else is going to have a very hard time for immigration advocates to find standing to sue that will hold up in the U.S. Supreme Court.
