Federal Judge Blocks Texas Ban on ‘Sanctuary Cities’

Sanctuary cities are seeking to protect our citizens by ignoring unjust, aggressive immigration policy changes the Justice Department is using to deport good people and destroy families.   Smart Dissent discussed in late June that the Justice Department are various states are seeking new ways to shutdown sanctuary cities.

In May 2017, Texas's legislature passed a law known as Senate Bill 4 or S.B. 4, "prohibits cities and counties from adopting policies that limit immigration enforcement, allows police officers to question the immigration status of anyone they detain or arrest and threatens officials who violate the law with fines, jail time and removal from office. It also directs local officials to cooperate with so-called immigration detainer requests, which allow foreign-born detainees to be transferred to federal custody after they are released from state or local custody."

A number of the state’s biggest cities, including Houston, Austin, San Antonio and Dallas, all of which are run by Democrats, joined a lawsuit against Texas seeking to strike down the law...

However, in late August, a Federal Judge temporarily blocked the law.

A federal judge in San Antonio on Wednesday blocked Texas from enforcing its ban on so-called sanctuary cities... The judge’s ruling was only temporary, and prevents the law from taking effect on Friday while a suit against it goes forward. But the decision, which Texas said it would appeal, served as a legal blow to one of the toughest state-issued immigration laws in the country... 

Unfortunately, the case will now head to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, one of the country’s most conservative appeals panels.  Stay tuned.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/judge-texas-sanctuary-cities.html