Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Tuesday that the country’s government is preparing to challenge a new Texas law that officially makes unlawful entry into the state a crime.
Lopez Obrador claimed that Senate Bill 4, which allows state law enforcement officers to apprehend those suspected of unlawful entry, is “inhumane,” and he said that Mexico’s “foreign ministry is already working on the process to challenge this law,” as reported by Reuters.
“With those policies, [Texas Gov. Greg Abbott] wants to win popularity,” added Lopez Obrador, according to The Texas Tribune. “He’s not going to win anything; on the contrary, he’ll lose.”
Just before officially signing SB 4 and two other border security bills into law, Abbott commented on Mexico’s role in the increase of unlawful migrants, saying that the country “actually is a cause of part of this.”
“What Lopez-Obrador has done is reprehensible, subjecting thousands upon thousands of people to torture, to rape, to assault, to even death. And he just fast-tracks them to the state of Texas and thinks he can condemn Texas because of it. That’s outrageous,” said Abbott, according to Texas Scorecard.
“He needs to understand that he is a large reason for the migration problem that we have in the United States of America. And we’re going to send them right back to Mexico.”
In addition to criticism from Lopez Obrador, SB 4 has prompted many other well-known figures and organizations to express displeasure.
Shortly after Abbott signed the bill, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) posted on social media that it is “a dangerous new law targeting immigrants + everyone who looks like them.”
The American Civil Liberties Union announced on Tuesday that it has filed a lawsuit to challenge the bill, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
This lawsuit claims that the new state legislation “bypasses federal law” by violating the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Despite the criticism from many others, Abbott has maintained that the bill is necessary because “President Biden’s deliberate inaction has left Texas to fend for itself,” as stated in a news release.
The Texas governor added that the new border security bills will help to “stop the tidal wave of illegal entry into Texas, add additional funding to build more border wall, and crackdown [sic] on human smuggling.”