The Supreme Court handed Texas a temporary win on Tuesday by allowing a contentious law making illegal border crossing a state crime to take effect, following a months-long feud with the Biden administration.

The legislation, known as Senate Bill 4, will allow Texas law enforcement and judges to arrest and deport migrants. It has been one of multiple disputes between Governor Abbott and the federal government over immigration. These have included differences over Mr. Abbott deploying the National Guard to the border and adding razor wire barriers. 

SB 4 had been on a temporary hold as the Supreme Court considered an emergency appeal to block the law, but on Tuesday, the majority issued a brief order allowing it to go ahead, signaling it was premature for the high court to intervene while arguments over the merits proceed at the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Arguments in the dispute were subsequently scheduled for 10 A.M. on Wednesday at the Fifth Circuit.

The court did not provide any explanation of its order, but Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, wrote a concurrence expressing their agreement with the high court’s move. “Before this Court intervenes on the emergency docket, the Fifth Circuit should be the first mover,” Justice Barrett notes. 

With immigration shaping up to be a central issue in the presidential election, Texas’s law has sparked national debate about what states can do in the perceived absence of federal law enforcement on immigration. 

The Biden administration cites a 2012 Supreme Court case, Arizona v. United States, which holds that immigration is solely within the federal government’s purview. Mr. Abbott, though, has repeatedly invoked the Constitution’s invasion clause, arguing that the Biden administration’s lack of border security has created a public safety crisis in his state, as the Sun has reported. 

Calling the Supreme Court decision a “huge win,” Texas’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, expressed support for the decision on X, adding that the law is “now in effect.” Mr. Abbott said the decision was “clearly a positive development” but noted that hearings were ongoing in the Fifth Circuit.

While the majority’s order centered on procedure — the issue of a stay — rather than weighing the merits of the legislation itself, the ruling included scathing dissents from the liberal justices relating to the substance of Texas’s law. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson write that the court is inviting “further chaos and crisis in immigration enforcement.” 

“Texas passed a law that directly regulates the entry and removal of noncitizens and explicitly instructs its state courts to disregard any ongoing federal immigration proceedings,” the liberal justices explain. “That law upends the federal-state balance of power that has existed for over a century, in which the National Government has had exclusive authority over entry and removal of noncitizens.”

The court’s decision gives a “green light” to a law that will upend that balance of power, they add. 

“Texas can now immediately enforce its own law, imposing criminal liability on thousands of noncitizens and requiring their removal to Mexico,” the dissent notes. “This law will disrupt sensitive foreign relations, frustrate the protection of individuals fleeing persecution, hamper active federal enforcement efforts, undermine federal agencies’ ability to detect and monitor imminent security threats, and deter noncitizens from reporting abuse or trafficking.” 

Justice Elena Kagan penned a separate dissent, noting that the “entry and removal of noncitizens particularly, are matters long thought the special province of the Federal Government.”

This story has been updated from the bulldog.