Texas Gov. Greg Abbot is taking the fight against illegal immigration into his own hands.
The Republican governor signed a law Monday empowering local and state police to arrest people suspected of illegally entering the country.
"The goal of these laws is to make sure that when they see somebody crossing over the border, as the National Guard see, as the Texas Department of Public Safety see, they know they're not profiling. They are seeing with their own eyes people who are violating the law," Abbott said.
The penalty for those arrested is up to six months in jail and repeat offenders can be imprisoned up to 20 years.
Judges also have the discretion to send them back to Mexico.
Abbott, who signed the law in front of a section of border fence in Brownsville, predicted the number of people crossing illegally into Texas would drop by "well over 50%, maybe 75%."
The move comes amid an increase in border crossings that has stretched U.S. Customs and Border Protection resources.
Troy Miller, the agency's acting commissioner, has called the number of daily arrivals "unprecedented," with illegal crossings topping 10,000 some days across the border in December.
Meanwhile, President Biden says only the federal government has the authority to enforce immigration laws.
The ACLU and the Mexican government are expected to challenge the law in court.
"The Texas governor acts that way because he wants to be the Republican vice-presidential candidate and wants to win popularity with these measures," said Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. "He's not going to win anything. On the contrary, he is going to lose support because there are a lot of Mexicans in Texas, a lot of migrants."
A key claim in Tuesday's lawsuit filed by the ACLU and other groups is that it violates the U.S. Constitution's supremacy clause. The suit accuses Texas of trying "to create a new state system to regulate immigration that completely bypasses and conflicts with the federal system."
The Texas law will take effect in March.
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