A special legislative session to consider increasing border security and allowing all law enforcement to deport illegal immigrants is getting under way in Texas, as Governor Abbott vows to protect the border and do what he says the federal government has failed to do. 

The latest salvo in the immigration enforcement feud between conservative states and the federal government is spurring constitutional questions about the extent of a state’s sovereignty. 

The third special session of the year, which began Monday, was called by Mr. Abbott last week, and under Texas law it can last a maximum of 30 days. The call for a special session is the latest in a fight brewing since President Biden took office, and the governor has issued similar executive orders increasing border security in the past. 

Now, Texas lawmakers will consider legislation to increase penalties for smuggling people over the border, provide more funding for a “border barrier infrastructure,” and authorize all police to deport illegal immigrants. The governor is also calling for laws related to public safety in developments such as “Colony Ridge,” following reports of thousands of illegal immigrants settling in the area. 

“What’s important here is for Texans to see the state of Texas asserting its sovereignty and standing up for them in ways that the federal government has consistently refused to,” the Texas Public Policy Foundation chief of intelligence and research, Joshua Treviño, tells The New York Sun. 

The effect, he adds, will be to reassert “what should be the core proposition of American civics, which is that the American people are in charge of what happens to America. And if that’s true in Texas then it can be true elsewhere too.” 

One issue is whether a state’s deportation force would violate Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which grants the federal government power to “establish a uniform rule of naturalization.”

“It’s 100 percent constitutional,” Mr. Treviño says. “The Constitution reserves the power of making citizens, which is the uniform rule of naturalization, to the federal government. But the reality is that states retain plenary powers over all persons, not just citizens, within their jurisdiction under the 10th Amendment.” 

That was how the Constitution was understood until 2012, when the Supreme Court’s decision in Arizona v. United States “essentially for the first time in American history completely rejected the states from anything having to do with the adjudication of legal status within borders,” Mr. Treviño adds. 

In 2012, through Arizona v. United States, the high court held that the state of Arizona could not make it a crime for an individual to be in the state illegally or to get a job in the state, or allow police to arrest and deport individuals, because these areas fell under federal purview. 

The legislation being discussed in the special session is a part of Texas “asserting its prerogatives that it held from its entry in the Union in late 1845 all the way through the middle of 2012,” Mr. Treviño says. “The only thing Texas and any other state cannot do is make or unmake a citizen, that’s clearly reserved to the federal government under the Constitution. All else falls to the purview of the state.”

Not everyone agrees that the immigration laws would be constitutional. “Federal law is very clear: States cannot engage in immigration enforcement,” a senior attorney at Texas Civil Rights Project’s Beyond Borders Program, Aron Thorn, said. 

A representative of the Texas American Civil Liberties Union was not reachable for comment about the constitutional implications of the legislation. 

If the special session goes according to Mr. Abbott’s plan, the state will, for the first time, “subject people to arrest for illegal entry into our state from a foreign nation,” Mr. Abbott says. All law enforcement officers would be able to “arrest or remove” any illegal immigrant, he adds, with “penalties up to 20 years in prison for refusing to comply with removal.” 

Mr. Abbott’s office was not immediately available to comment Monday. 

Immigration issues have been a major focus in northern cities, as New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, traveled to Mexico and South America last week to discourage more migrants from coming, and New York’s governor called the southern border “too open,” as the Sun has reported.

“We’re at a limit,” Governor Hochul said, “If you’re going to leave your country, go somewhere else.” Her rhetoric marks a turn from only two years ago, when she was welcoming migrants with “open arms.”

“I think our friends up north getting to experience less than 1 percent of what we do in Texas has had a very beneficial effect on their outlook and politics,” Mr. Treviño says. “I welcome their partnership in securing our border.”