Texas Lawmakers Want To Allow Civilians To Patrol The Border

Opponents say GOP lawmakers want to wrest immigration enforcement away from the federal government.

AUSTIN, Texas ― A bill before the Texas legislature would create a vigilante force to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border, drawing sharp criticism from civil rights groups and raising questions about how far the state’s conservative lawmakers are willing to go to challenge federal control of immigration enforcement.

The bill, penned by Republican state Rep. Matt Schaefer, would allow any U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident without a felony conviction to join a volunteer police force called the “Border Protection Unit.”

Schaefer’s bill cites the “deadly activities of transnational cartels” and trafficking of “lethal quantities of opioids such as fentanyl” as reasons for the urgent need to recruit amateurs to do part-time police work on the border, but it’s almost certainly a response to concerns about unauthorized immigration as well.

Civil rights groups, immigrant advocates and Democratic lawmakers gathered in Austin, Texas, on April 13 to protest a proposed state law that would create a volunteer police force to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border.
Civil rights groups, immigrant advocates and Democratic lawmakers gathered in Austin, Texas, on April 13 to protest a proposed state law that would create a volunteer police force to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border.
Roque Planas/HuffPost

The proposed law would give volunteer border patrollers the authority to “deter and repel” people attempting to cross the border outside ports of entry. The unit’s volunteers would not automatically gain arrest powers, but they could obtain them with training and authorization from the governor.

Civil rights groups, immigration advocates and Democratic lawmakers said at a press conference Wednesday that the proposed law would put a target on the backs of people of color who live along the border, as well as migrants fleeing violence in their home countries.

“These laws criminalize our very existence,” said Alicia Torres of the criminal justice reform group Grassroots Leadership.

The proposed law would create a “Texas secret police,” said Democratic state Rep. Gene Wu. “I know who are the people who are going to be listed as enemies. They’re going to look like us. We’re the ones who look like everything they’ve demonized.”

Forty-eight members of the state House of Representatives have signed on as co-authors of House Bill 20. House Speaker Dade Phelan supports the bill, describing it as “bold” and “innovative,” which means it is all but certain to pass the lower chamber.

It also has a strong chance of passing the Senate, which is presided over by the hyper-conservative Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

The two Republicans have clashed, however, over Phelan’s disinterest in cheering along Patrick’s culture war fixation. As the session draws to a close, it’s possible that Patrick will let HB 20 die to deprive Phelan of a legislative accomplishment that would appeal to the Republican base, according to Rice University political scientist Mark Jones.

“This is the issue this session that Phelan is going to pass that is [in] some ways to the right of Dan Patrick, to shield his moderate colleagues from the criticism that they are insufficiently conservative,” Jones said.

Right-wing volunteer patrol groups and militias have flocked to the U.S.-Mexico border in search of unauthorized migrants and drug runners for decades, dating back to a 1977 publicity stunt organized by Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

But creating a volunteer police force targeting immigrants would give unprecedented official backing to border security hobbyists, and put the state of Texas on a collision course with the federal government. The Supreme Court has historically limited states’ role in immigration enforcement, which is a federal responsibility.

Texas, however, has invested more than a decade and billions of dollars in state immigration enforcement programs, with dubious and dishonestly reported results.

Since 2021, the state has deployed some 10,000 National Guard members to the border as part of an initiative called Operation Lone Star. Texas has prosecuted thousands of migrants on state criminal charges under the program.

The proposed vigilante law would push Texas so far into federal immigration enforcement that opponents see it as a ploy to force a legal reckoning over the issue, with the aim of getting it in front of a more conservative Supreme Court that has overturned the right to abortion and century-old gun restrictions.

“They are trying to create an immigration system in Texas,” said Fernando García, director of the Border Network for Human Rights. “It’s illegal. What’s next? They’re going to enforce IRS law?”

The proposed law contends that Article 1, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution gives the Texas governor the ability to declare a “state of invasion,” which in turn lets the state use its own forces to combat the invaders.

But an “invasion,” for the purposes of passing legal muster in the federal courts, almost certainly refers to a military incursion by a foreign country, rather than migrants or drug traffickers.

Fielding a volunteer police force to enforce immigration in response to a contrived invasion would make it legally indefensible, even with a uniquely conservative Supreme Court, according to Jones, the political scientist. If Gov. Greg Abbott (R) were to sign HB 20 into law, the courts would likely block it before Texas could implement it.

“If it passes,” Jones said, “it would go into that long list of legislation that passes out of the Texas legislature, is immediately enjoined and is never heard about again, because it was passed for purely symbolic reasons.”

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