(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court has rejected a Biden administration request to intervene and keep Texas’s strict immigration enforcement law, known as SB 4, on hold while it is challenged in lower courts.

The law would authorize local and state law enforcement to arrest migrants they suspect crossed into the state illegally. It would also also give judges the power to order migrants to be transported to a port of entry and returned to Mexico regardless of their country of origin.

The Biden administration has argued that immigration law is solely the responsibility of the federal government, and not local jurisdictions, as laid out in the Constitution.

“This Court has long recognized that the regulation of entry and removal of noncitizens is inseparably intertwined with the conduct of foreign relations and thus vested ‘solely in the Federal Government,'” the administration wrote in a filing with the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month.

Texas, meanwhile, has argued that it is within its rights to arrest migrants because SB 4 is applicable under the State War Clause of the Constitution, which allows states to act when it is “actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.