By 2023, Texas had stopped waiting for Washington. Under Operation Lone Star, Governor Greg Abbott's multibillion-dollar border initiative, the state deployed a floating barrier of buoys in the Rio Grande at Eagle Pass, strung miles of concertina wire along the riverbank, bused tens of thousands of migrants to northern cities, and passed SB 4, a law claiming state authority to arrest and effectively deport illegal border crossers. Texas taking the border into its own hands became the year's defining federalism fight, and it forced a question the country had dodged: when the federal government declines to enforce immigration law, what may a state do about it?
The buoys and the wire
In July 2023, Texas anchored a roughly 1,000-foot line of large orange buoys in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, designed to make swimming crossings impractical. The Justice Department sued almost immediately, arguing the barrier violated a federal statute governing obstructions in navigable waters, and the litigation seesawed through the Fifth Circuit. The razor wire generated its own case with a memorable posture: Border Patrol agents were cutting Texas's wire to reach and process migrants, Texas sued to stop them, and in January 2024 the Supreme Court allowed federal agents to keep cutting while the case proceeded. The spectacle of state and federal forces working against each other on the same riverbank captured the era perfectly.
SB 4: the big constitutional swing
The boldest move came in December 2023, when Texas enacted SB 4, making illegal entry from a foreign nation a state crime and authorizing state judges to order removals to Mexico. This ran head-on into Arizona v. United States (2012), where the Supreme Court held that immigration enforcement is dominantly federal. The law ping-ponged through emergency rulings in early 2024, briefly taking effect for hours before being blocked again, while Mexico announced it would not accept removals from a U.S. state. SB 4 was less a workable enforcement scheme than a constitutional test case, engineered to invite the courts to revisit how much room states have when they claim to be, in the law's language, defending against an invasion.
Both things can be true
Our view requires holding two ideas at once. First: Texas's underlying grievance was legitimate and serious. The state absorbed record crossings, its border towns bore costs no interior state faced, and federal policy during the surge years relied on releases and parole at a scale Congress never sanctioned. Frustration was not manufactured. Second: a fifty-state patchwork of immigration enforcement, with states ordering their own deportations, is genuinely dangerous constitutional ground, and conservatives who cheered SB 4 should ask how those precedents would be used by states with the opposite politics. The durable answer was always the same:
- Federal enforcement of existing law, applied consistently;
- Congressionally funded barriers, technology, and personnel;
- Asylum reform that decides claims quickly and removes deterrence-defeating delays;
- Adequate legal channels so the labor market's demand flows through visas, not smugglers.
What it accomplished
Operationally, results were contested; crossings shifted between sectors, and Texas credited its efforts when Eagle Pass numbers fell in 2024, while critics noted flows largely moved elsewhere. Politically, the campaign mattered enormously: it kept the border atop the national agenda through the 2024 election and previewed the enforcement posture that followed. Legally, it left a docket of unresolved federalism questions that will shape state power for years.
What this means for you
For legal immigrants and applicants, the state-versus-federal era carries real implications. Enforcement climates now vary sharply by state, affecting everything from licenses to policing practices, so know the rules of the state you live in, not just federal law. Carry proof of status; in high-enforcement environments, documentation questions arise in ordinary situations. And expect border politics to keep whipsawing national policy; the best insulation is a clean, well-documented legal status pursued through established visa categories.
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