The full 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 10-7 on Friday to overturn a 2024 injunction that had blocked Texas from enforcing its border-arrest law, handing the state a major victory in a legal battle that has stretched across two presidential administrations and all the way to the Supreme Court. Texas authorities may now, for the first time, begin arresting and prosecuting people suspected of illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border under the state law known as SB4.
The ruling marks the most significant shift yet in the state's fight to exercise its own enforcement power at the southern border, a fight that Washington, immigrant-advocacy groups, and even some Republican-appointed judges have resisted at every turn.
Gov. Greg Abbott signed SB4 in December 2023. The law makes it a state crime to illegally enter or re-enter Texas from a foreign country. It empowers state judges to order violators to leave the United States and imposes prison sentences of up to 20 years on those who refuse to comply.
SB4 never got the chance to operate. A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the law in February 2024. The case then climbed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which briefly allowed the law to take effect, only for the 5th Circuit, within hours, to halt it again pending further review. As the Washington Examiner reported, the 5th Circuit held expedited arguments after re-blocking the law less than twelve hours after the Supreme Court had cleared it.
A 2-1 panel of the 5th Circuit upheld the injunction in July 2025. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton then urged the full court to reconsider the case, and the full court agreed to do so.
That reconsideration ended Friday with the 10-7 ruling. U.S. Circuit Judge Jerry Smith, a Reagan appointee, wrote the majority opinion. All but two of the court's Republican-appointed judges joined him.
Smith's reasoning turned on standing. He concluded that the immigrant-rights groups challenging SB4, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, American Gateways, and the county of El Paso, had not shown the kind of concrete injury required to bring the case. The fact that these organizations voluntarily increased their representation of immigrants adversely affected by the law, Smith wrote, did not give them standing to challenge it. He put the point bluntly:
"When enterprising plaintiffs repackage a generalized grievance as an 'injury,' courts should rightly exercise caution."
That framing matters. Rather than reaching the merits of whether SB4 conflicts with federal immigration law, the majority dismissed the challenge on procedural grounds. The door is open for future plaintiffs to try again, but for now, the injunction is gone and the law stands.
The core dispute over SB4 has always been whether a state can enforce immigration-related crimes that the federal government claims as its exclusive territory. The Biden administration challenged the law on exactly those grounds, arguing that immigration is the prerogative of the federal government. AP News reported that the Justice Department said the law would profoundly alter "the status quo that has existed between the United States and the States in the context of immigration for almost 150 years."
Opponents of SB4 have repeatedly pointed to a 2012 Supreme Court precedent, the ruling in Arizona v. United States, which struck down key parts of a similar Arizona law and reserved removal authority to the federal government. The Biden administration and civil rights groups leaned heavily on that case, as the New York Post detailed in its coverage of the Supreme Court's earlier intervention.
Seven judges on the 5th Circuit dissented Friday. U.S. Circuit Judge Priscilla Richman, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote in dissent that under the controlling 2012 precedent, Texas's law was trumped by federal law:
"Texas cannot enact its own immigration regime."
But the majority sidestepped that debate entirely by ruling that the challengers lacked standing. The merits question, can Texas create its own border-enforcement apparatus?, remains formally unanswered by the full 5th Circuit.
The legal landscape shifted dramatically between the law's signing and Friday's ruling. The Biden administration actively fought SB4 in court. President Trump's administration took the opposite approach, dropping the federal government's case against the law. That withdrawal left the immigrant-advocacy groups and El Paso County as the remaining challengers, and it was their standing that the majority found lacking.
The timing is no accident. With the federal government no longer opposing SB4, the advocacy groups carried the full burden. And the majority concluded they could not carry it. Texas Solicitor General Aaron Nielson had argued during earlier proceedings that Texas has a "right to defend itself" at the border, a position that Fox News covered as the federal challenge unfolded.
Paxton hailed the ruling in a statement:
"Texas's right to arrest illegals, protect our citizens, and enforce immigration law is fundamental."
The law allows Texas state and local police to arrest people suspected of entering the state illegally from a foreign country. State judges can then order those individuals to leave the United States. Anyone who refuses to comply faces prison time, up to 20 years.
Critics have called the law an unconstitutional overreach. U.S. District Judge David Ezra, who issued the original injunction, called SB4 unconstitutional and rejected Texas Republicans' claims of an "invasion" along the southern border. Ezra wrote that Texas "cannot genuinely maintain that noncitizens crossing the border are an organized military force aimed at conquest or plunder."
Supporters counter that Texas stepped in because the federal government refused to do its job. The state's position has been straightforward: if Washington will not secure the border, Austin will.
Edna Yang, co-executive director of American Gateways, called the ruling a setback but not the end of the road:
"A setback, not the final word, and we remain committed to fighting this dangerous law at every turn."
The challengers could seek Supreme Court review. A new plaintiff with clearer standing could file a fresh challenge. And the merits question, whether SB4 conflicts with federal immigration law under the 2012 precedent, has not been resolved by the 5th Circuit's ruling, which turned on standing rather than substance.
Several open questions remain. Which two Republican-appointed judges broke from the majority? What specific enforcement actions will Texas undertake, and how quickly? Will the Supreme Court take up the case again? None of those answers are clear yet.
But what is clear is this: after more than two years of injunctions, emergency stays, and procedural detours, Texas has the green light to enforce a law its governor signed in December 2023. The state that has spent years arguing it had the right to defend its own border can now try.
For the people who live along the Texas-Mexico border, the ranchers, the small-town residents, the local law enforcement officers who have watched the crisis unfold in their own backyards, this ruling is not an abstraction. It is the first time their state government has been allowed to act on the promise it made.
Washington spent years insisting that only Washington could handle the border. The border is the evidence of how that worked out.
