As the battle over Texas’ new border security law continues to wage on in the courts, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told Chris Salcedo he “still feel[s] very good” about the law.
After the U.S. Supreme Court moved to allow the law to go into effect on Tuesday afternoon, mere hours later in the evening, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals put the law on hold yet again.
Whatever the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decides, Patrick said he expects the case to land back in the Supreme Court.
He called the 6-3 SCOTUS vote Tuesday allowing the law to go into effect “a very positive development” in the case, hinting that it may provide insight into how the court will rule later.
Senate Bill 4, the new law in question, creates a state crime for entering the country illegally, thereby paving the way for state law enforcement to arrest illegal aliens.
While President Joe Biden’s Justice Department is arguing that Texas’ law is unconstitutional because states don’t have the right to enforce immigration law, Patrick maintains that states do have the right to defend themselves in an invasion.
We’re clearly invaded now by land, by sea, by air. We know there are thousands of drones in the air—according to the military, we already were seeing that. We know they’re coming by sea—they’ve been doing that for years coming into Florida with drugs and illegal immigrants. And we know that 10 million have come by land since Biden’s open border policy started.
Patrick also said there has been misinformation spread about what Texas’ law actually does, so he took the chance to clarify it.
“If you cross illegally, and we see you—local law enforcement—we can arrest you under Senate Bill 4,” explained Patrick. “We bring you in; we run a background check, take your fingerprints, etc., make sure we know if you’re a potential terrorist or if you’re a criminal. If you’re not in those two categories, then the magistrate says you can spend six months in jail here in Texas, or we can take you back to the bridge and you go back over to Mexico. If they come back, if that person who’s not a criminal comes back a second time, then they go to jail in Texas for years. If you’re a criminal, depending on your level of crime and if it’s a state crime, federal crime, [or] terrorist watchlist, then you either go to ICE or you’re arrested and we’re holding you. It depends on the crime.”
You can listen to the full episode of the Salcedo Storm podcast with Dan Patrick here.
