Democrats are turning to the courts in hopes of restricting Texas’s immigration policies, with the Biden administration suing the state for its attempts to enforce border laws and New York, a sanctuary city, suing 17 bus companies that have been involved with transporting migrants.

“We cannot bear the cost of reckless political ploys from the state of Texas alone,” New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, said in a statement Thursday. “Today our administration filed a lawsuit against 17 companies that have taken part in Texas’ Governor Greg Abbott’s scheme to transport tens of thousands of migrants to New York City in an attempt to overwhelm our social services system.” 

New York City is seeking to recoup some of the roughly $700 million it has spent on caring for migrants bused from Texas during the past two years, Mr. Adams said. “Governor Abbott’s continued use of migrants as political pawns is not only chaotic and inhumane, but makes clear he puts politics over people,” he said.

The news follows a separate lawsuit by the Biden administration, which is suing Texas over a contentious new state law making illegal immigration a state crime. It’s sparking an epic constitutional clash over whether the federal government has “exclusive authority” over immigrant entry and removal, as the Department of Justice claims in the lawsuit.

It’s the second challenge to Texas’s immigration law since Governor Abbott signed it in December, after civil rights groups sued in an effort to block it from going into effect ahead of March 5.

“Biden sued me today because I signed a law making it illegal for an illegal immigrant to enter or attempt to enter Texas directly from a foreign nation. I like my chances,” Mr. Abbott fired back on X on Wednesday night. “Texas is the only government in America trying to stop illegal immigration.”

Mr. Abbott’s office did not immediately respond to a request by the Sun for comment.

The Biden administration maintains that provisions in Texas’s Senate Bill 4, which make unlawful entry a state crime and allow state judges to order the removal of non-citizens, “intrude on the federal government’s exclusive authority to regulate the entry and removal of noncitizens, frustrate the United States’ immigration operations and proceedings, and interfere with U.S. foreign relations.”

Citing a 2012 Supreme Court case that held that Arizona could not make illegal entry a crime or allow police to arrest and deport noncitizens, Arizona v. United States, the Department of Justice asserts that it has “broad, undoubted power over the subject of immigration and the status of noncitizens.”

The department’s lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court at Austin, argues that Texas’s law violates the Constitution’s Supremacy clause. It notes that regulating noncitizens is “so intimately blended and intertwined” with the federal government’s duties that “state law must give way” in cases where both entities are acting.

“We have brought this action to ensure that Texas adheres to the framework adopted by Congress and the Constitution for regulation of immigration,” the head of the justice department’s Civil Division, Brian Boynton, said in a statement. A representative of the department did not respond to a request from the Sun for comment.

Meanwhile, Mr. Abbott is receiving support from Republicans, including Speaker Johnson, who said the governor’s efforts in Texas are protecting citizens in the absence of immigration law enforcement by the Biden administration.

“If you’re the governor of Texas or a border state, or any governor, you have the responsibility, the right, the constitutional authority to do the right thing and secure your people,” he said. “Everything they’re trying to do to protect Texans, the White House is going to take them to court and have it undone. Madness is the only word we can think of to describe this.”

Senator Vance of Ohio chimed in on X on Thursday, calling the Biden administration’s handling of immigration issues the “height of insanity.” “Kudos to Greg Abbott for doing something about this,” Mr. Vance wrote. “Biden refuses to use his government’s power to enforce the border. He instead uses it to sue Texas for trying to enforce the border.”