BREAKING: El Paso County Sues Texas After Abbott Gives Police Authority To Arrest Illegal Migrants

On Tuesday, El Paso County, alongside two immigrant rights groups, sued the state of Texas after Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) signed Senate Bill 4, which authorized state law enforcement to arrest illegal immigrants who enter the Lone Star State. The bill is set to face considerable legal hurdles due to the Supreme Court case Arizona v. United States, which prevents the empowering of local and state authorities to enforce federal immigration laws.

In the lawsuit brought by El Paso and the two immigrant rights groups, they argue that the law should be struck down entirely, given that the Supreme Court has decided that the federal government has sole authority over immigration. The American Civil Liberty Union (ACLU) filed the suit on behalf of the plaintiffs against the Texas Department of Public Safety, who would be carrying out the law, and El Paso District Attorney Bill Hicks, who would be enforcing the law with prosecutions.

At the bill's signing, Gov. Abbott expected that the bill would be challenged in court, but he outlined the legal justification that would allow the state to defend itself from the ongoing invasion of both illegal migrants and drug cartels. "The authors of the United States Constitution foresaw a situation when the federal government would be inattentive to states that faced charges at their borders," Abbott explained. "And in response, they inserted Article One Section 10 to the United States Constitution to empower states to take action to defend themselves. And that is exactly what Texas is doing."

The governor went on to welcome the court challenge and said that the law "can and should be upheld by the courts." It would appear that the Texas governor got his wish as the case will soon head before a judge and possibly even the Supreme Court on appeal. The legal challenge came after Monday saw a record-breaking number of migrants crossing into the United States. "Per CBP sources, there were more than 12,600 migrants encountered at the southern border in the last 24 hours, the highest single day total ever recorded," Fox News' Bill Melugin reported. "The true number is *significantly* higher because there are thousands still waiting to be processed in Eagle Pass, and they do not count in the numbers until they are put into the computers."

"The official numbers yesterday include over 11,000 Border Patrol apprehensions of illegal immigrants and more than 1,600 migrants encountered at CBP ports of entry," he explained. "This breaks the record of 12,000 encounters that was set just two weeks ago."

While Monday saw 12,600 encounters in 24 hours, this isn't the first record-breaking level of encounters even this month. In early December, CBP encountered a then-record-breaking 12,000 migrants, with 10,200 of those migrants being encountered by agents at ports of entry to be processed. The 2023 fiscal year has also kept with the record-breaking pace, with 2.4 million illegal migrants coming across the border under Biden's watch. The monthly encounter record was also broken recently, with September seeing 260,000 migrants cross from Mexico.

As the Biden administration continues to allow millions of illegal immigrants to flow across the southern border each year, Texas is doing everything in its power, even challenging preexisting law, to defend its citizens.

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