Hi, and welcome back to United Immigrant Families. My name is Rosemary Vega, and I'm an immigration attorney in Houston, Texas. Thank you for listening to the podcast. And today I want to talk about Texas, a fairly new Texas law called SB4. So Texas passed this legislation in November of 2023, and it was supposed to go into effect on March 5th of this year, 2024.

However, this legislation has been, um, in the courts. because the ACLU and other lawyers, other organizations have been, um, filing lawsuits claiming that it is unconstitutional. And let's talk about the law and why Many believe that it is unconstitutional. Okay. So what is SB4? SB4 is a law that states that if a law, a police officer, law enforcement officer has probable cause, if they're, they have a reason to stop you, anyone, right?

Then they can ask your immigration status. Texas is claiming that the federal government isn't doing their, their job as far as immigration is concerned. So they're going to do it at least in the state of Texas.

And, you know, many citizens Should know this because it goes back to, you know, many of my clients, when they do their natural exam, we go through the questions and one of the questions is some, some rights and some duties are for the federal government and some is for the state government. And some are for, and one, one of the rights and duties and laws for the federal government is the immigration laws, right?

And that's for the federal government to handle. Okay. So here we go. And that's why the many lawyers are arguing that it is not, this law is unconstitutional. So it's held up in the courts, and that's the basics of it. It's much more complicated than that. I'm trying to simplify it here for for our podcasters and our listeners, but it's much more complicated than that.

Okay. Um, but that's the gist of it. And so, as before, is basically saying If a police officer arrests, stops you for speeding, stops you for, for any reason, right? Speeding, running a red light, running a stop sign, they could ask you your immigration status. However, this is where it gets interesting. Instead of sending you to immigration, they would have a Texas judge determine whether you you're, you're able to stay in the United States. That's where it gets interesting. That's where the issue really lies. So you're going to go through a Texas magistrate, Texas judge, who is going to determine, is this person, you know, able to stay. And are you going to say, Oh, yeah, just I want to be deported.

And then that judge is going to deport you to the United from the United States. Does that judge actually have that authority?

Then you, or you say, no, absolutely not. I'm not going to have, I want to fight my case, which most immigration attorneys would definitely recommend that you fight always. Um, And so you don't agree to any type of removal, don't agree to be deported. So you're going to, to fight this and it's going to be stuck in, you're going to be stuck in fighting, fighting, fighting these cases.

And so right now this law is put on hold because they're, they're arguing this. in the courts. And the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court had said, okay, we're, we don't, it's not ready for us to hear because the lower court needs to hear it first. So right now, the, this circuit is hearing the arguments and they're making those decisions right now.

Eventually, the Supreme Court is going to hear this case. This, the Supreme Court eventually will hear the case and we'll see what happens. But that is where it lies. Okay. So I know there's lots of questions because I've been going out into the community and hearing a lot of the questions that are being asked within the community.

And these are some of the questions that I hear readily. What if I don't have a driver's license and a police officer stops me? So you...