As a group of Texas and Hispanic Democrats demanded the US attorney general block what they called “the most extreme anti-immigrant state bill in the United States”, signed by the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, on Monday, the president of Mexico and the American Civil Liberties Union also vowed to fight the law.
“Texas, we’ll see you in court,” the ACLU said.
In a court filing in Austin, Texas, plaintiffs represented by the ACLU – El Paso county, Texas, and two immigrant rights groups, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and American Gateways – sued Steven McCraw, director of the state department of public safety, and Bill Hicks, district attorney for the 34th district.
On social media, the ACLU said it aimed “to block Texas from enforcing the most extreme anti-immigrant law in the nation”, which it also said was unconstitutional.
The law will allow Texas law enforcement agencies to arrest migrants deemed to have entered the US illegally and empower judges to order deportations. It is set to go into effect next year.
On Monday, congressional Democrats led by Joaquin Castro, from San Antonio, and including 11 other Texas representatives, Nanette Diaz Barragán of California (chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus) and eight other Hispanic representatives, published a letter to the attorney general, Merrick Garland.
“This legislation authorises state law enforcement officers to arrest and detain people and state judges to order mass deportations,” the letter read.
“This bill is set to be the most extreme anti-immigrant state bill in the United States,” the letter said. “It is clearly pre-empted by federal law and when it goes into effect will likely result in racial profiling, significant due process violations, and unlawful arrests of citizens, lawful permanent residents, and others.”
The next day, the president of Mexico, Andres Manuel López Obrador, said his government was preparing to challenge the law, which he called “inhumane”.
“The foreign ministry is already working on the process to challenge this law,” he said, adding that 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”.
On social media, Castro linked passage of the law to extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric deployed on the campaign trail by Donald Trump, the 91-times criminally charged former president who dominates Republican primary polling.
Castro said: “Forty-eight hours after Trump accused immigrants of ‘poisoning the blood of our country’, Governor Abbott is signing a dangerous new law targeting immigrants and everyone who looks like them.”
Trump made the comments at a rally in New Hampshire on Saturday, then complained of an “invasion” in Nevada on Sunday. Observers, opponents and historians were quick to point out the authoritarian roots of such rhetoric, which Trump has used before. Many made direct comparisons to Adolf Hitler, who used similar language about Jews in his autobiography and manifesto, Mein Kampf.
On Monday night, a New York Republican congresswoman, Nicole Malliotakis, attempted to defend Trump on television.
“When he said ‘they are poisoning’, I think he was talking about the Democratic policies,” Malliotakis claimed. “I think he was talking about the open border policy.
“You know what’s actually poisoning America is the amount of fentanyl that’s coming over the open border. And so this is a serious issue, and I think that’s what he’s talking about.”
Her host, Abby Phillip of CNN, said Trump “was saying that the immigrants who are coming in … they’re poisoning the blood of the nation”.
Malliotakis insisted: “He never said ‘immigrants are poisoning,’ though … He didn’t say the word ‘immigrants’.”
In Congress, immigration has once again become a political football, Senate Republicans holding up aid to Ukraine in search of concessions from Democrats.
Abbott is among Republican governors who have forcibly transferred migrants to Democratic-run states. In Brownsville, Texas, on Monday, he signed the new bill and said: “[Joe] Biden’s deliberate inaction has left Texas to fend for itself.”
In their letter to Garland, the Democrats led by Castro urged the attorney general to “assert your authority over federal immigration and foreign policy and pursue legal action, as appropriate, to stop this unconstitutional and dangerous legislation from going into effect”.
