The Other Problem With Authoritarianism

Texas’ five youth detention centers will no longer accept new kids because of staff shortages.

The Texas Juvenile Justice Department said staff are already at risk of being unable to provide basic supervision.https://t.co/kneiH3F4R8

— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) July 7, 2022

Authoritarianism doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Abbott took money from child services to fight the “enemy” on the border, but it earned him a federal investigation. Abbott finds, suddenly, there are limits to his authority. Or rather, to his ability to create useful “enemies.”

Now Abbott wants to authorize DPS to detain immigrants and return them to points of entry.

Despite the state's allocation of $4 billion for border security and the deployment of thousands of National Guard troops and state police to the border, Abbott has faced growing pressure from within his party to assert a stronger state role and invoke “invasion” powers under the U.S. Constitution. Such a declaration, some Texas Republicans contend, would give states solid legal ground to invoke war powers to allow the state’s National Guard to deport migrants. The idea has been widely derided by legal experts as a political ploy, and Abbott earlier this year expressed concern that it could expose state law enforcement to federal prosecution. 

But on Thursday, Abbott stopped just shy of fulfilling those requests. 

The executive order allows the Texas National Guard and Texas Department of Public Safety to apprehend “immigrants who cross the border between ports of entry or commit other violations of federal law, and to return” them to ports of entry. It is unclear from the executive order what state authorities would do with the migrants once they returned them to the ports of entry, which are manned by federal immigration authorities.

Immigrants are always a useful enemy, but this is also an election year. Beto is within 6 points of Abbott now.  And this stunt, too, will prompt federal investigations:

But if state authorities are authorized to return those migrants to the border after they are arrested, the order raises a question of whether those authorities are attempting to enforce immigration law, said Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute. 

"In terms of transporting, that's exactly the question I'd have. Where would be the authority [come from] for state officials to transport people they suspect of being in violation of immigration law and having just recently crossed without arresting them for some reason?" said Meissner, who ran the U.S. Immigration and Nationalization Service from 1993 to 2000. "Were they to do that, I think that raises pretty basic civil rights violation questions." 

Aaron Reichlin-Melnik, policy director for the American Immigration Council, said Abbott's order deputizes state authorities to arrest migrants for federal immigration violations, which the U.S. Supreme Court has said is a federal responsibility. State authorities can only enforce immigration law if they've been permitted by the federal government. 

"Gov. Abbott is inviting a lawsuit from the Biden administration just as the Arizona legislature did over a decade ago ... which led to the Supreme Court laying out that the federal government alone has authority to do immigration enforcement," he said. 

Reichlin-Melnik said the order could also expose troopers and National Guard service members to a lawsuit from migrants. He noted that as recently as April, Abbott had expressed concern that issuing an "invasion" declaration could expose state authorities to federal prosecution. 

"Any National Guard troops or troopers deputized to do this could theoretically face civil liability from the immigrant if the person decided to sue," he said. "It is a really risky gambit and one who's most likely victims would be the law enforcement officers he orders to carry out the duty and not him."

Operation Lone Star, which is at the center of all this, is under federal investigation. Now he has two investigations, and can expect a third. So Abbott is simply creating more problems for the state. Doesn’t that make the state the enemy?

I don’t think that makes much of a campaign pledge; nor the basis for authoritarian government.