A federal judge has blocked a Texas state law that allowed police to arrest foreign nationals who cross the U.S. Southern Border to enter the United States illegally.
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge David A. Ezra of the Western District of Texas blocked state officials from enforcing the new law.
The law would make illegal immigration a state crime.
Judge Ezra granted a preliminary injunction that will block Texas’s Senate Bill 4 from taking effect next week.
The law would allow state authorities to arrest and jail illegal aliens.
It would also give state judges the power to order deportations.
In his ruling, the judge wrote that Texas and other states “may not exercise immigration enforcement power except as authorized by the federal government.”
Texas can appeal the decision, however.
The injunction comes in response to a lawsuit by Immigration and civil rights groups against Texas.
The lawsuit was filed after Republican Gov. Gregg Abbott signed the law in December.
At the signing ceremony, Abbott said the goal of the legislation was to “stop the tidal wave of illegal entry into Texas.”
Under the law, a migrant in Texas custody could either agree to a judge’s order to leave the