In late 2023, the Texas legislature created several new state immigration crimes and empowered state judges to order noncitizens to go to Mexico in Senate Bill 4. For over two years, federal courts put the legislation on hold as they considered a civil lawsuit that challenged whether federal law preempted Texas’s scheme. Recently, however, the Fifth Circuit allowed the legislation to take effect, concluding that the civil litigants did not have standing to raise their constitutional challenges. The law thus went into effect without the appellate court considering the merits of the preemption claim.
Following the lifting of the civil injunction, Doug gave a presentation to members of the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association on defending individuals charged with Senate Bill 4 crimes. He presented with Amrutha Jindal, his former colleague and the Executive Director of the Lone Star Defenders Office. They discussed the many potential defenses to the state immigration crimes, including the constitutional challenges that criminal-defense attorneys can raise.