Texas has a long history of conflicts with the federal government over policies and laws that protect immigrants and defend them as a part of our nation. Immigrants have been a fundamental part in the Texas economy. Most immigrants in Texas hail from Mexico due to its proximity to the state. According to the Migration Policy Institute, Texas was the number one state by absolute growth in immigrant’s population from 2000-2016 with 1,830,000 immigrants (Zong et al.), having consequently the third-largest immigrant population in the United States (Rocha et al. 904). Immigrants support the local economy in a different number of industries, especially the construction industry. Construction is one of Texas’s largest and fastest growing industries, with most of its workers are from immigrants’ communities. Immigrants are considered for many people an integral part of Texas diverse communities because of their hard work as workers, taxpayers, business owners and neighbors making and extensive contributions that benefits all of us.
The
American Civil Liberties Union of Texas known by its acronym ACLU of Texas is
an organization dedicated to defending the constitutional and civil rights
that all Texans have. This institution reclaims the rights not only for
citizens of the United States but also for everybody regardless of immigration
status. In Texas, immigrants not only contribute to our diversity, but they
also enrich our economy due to their hard work every day. Despite this,
immigrants’ communities are always harassed, profiled and detained by
militarized law enforcement agencies controlled by extremist politicians. Immigrants
should have several rights contended in the Constitution that have been denied
to them on several occasions. The right to due process, the right to legal
counsel, the right to be with your family, the right to education, and the
right against unreasonable search and seizure are some of the rights that immigrants
have been deprived.
After
Donald Trump won the elections of the United States and officially began his
presidency, the immigrant’s situation has been much harder and the panic in
the immigrant’s communities started to be critical. Donald Trump didn’t wait
too long to start his repudiation against immigrants and posted a tweet
arguing that undocumented immigrants need to be immediately returned from
where they came from with no judges or Court Cases. This tweet of Trump and the recent problems
produced because of the family separation at the border along with the
administration’s ‘zero tolerance’ immigration policy has caused too many
people to question the legal rights of immigrants under United States law.
United
States Constitution also apply to undocumented immigrants because most of the
provision of the Constitutions are based on personhood and jurisdiction. Undocumented
individuals don’t have all the rights in the Constitution, for example, the
right to vote, but they still have some rights. Several parts of the
Constitution use the term ‘person’ or ‘people’ instead of ‘citizen’ or
‘Americans’. For these reasons those laws, that mention person or people
instead of a citizen, apply to every single person physically on the U.S.
soil, without matter their migratory status. Subsequently, many of the basic
rights apply to citizens and noncitizens, such as freedom of religion and
speech, equal protection under the law, and the right to due process before
they can be deprived of liberty, property, and life.
The
Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution states that “no person…shall
be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be
deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” (“Fifth
Amendment”). Due process of law has been throughout history at the heart of
several immigrants’ cases. Reno v. Flores was a court case in 1993,
where the Supreme Court decided to order the government to release the alien minors
to their parents or a relative that has the custody of the child. This case
returned to the fame again due to the surge in family separations in the
border. Due process of law has always been complicated and sometimes a
violated right in court cases. Immigrants have the right to due process, but
several times has happened that immigrants are not even granted a hearing at
all. After President Trump’s announced
that immigrants should return from where they came from, the “expedited
removal” was put into effect. Expedited removal was a process to deport
immigrants faster. This removal process was created by the Illegal Immigration
Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.
Under
the expedited removal process, some immigrants can be deported immediately
without first having the due process right or going through a courts hearing.
If an immigrant is in the country for less than two years and they also are
within one-hundred miles far from the border, the expedited removal process will
be applied to those individuals immediately, except for asylum seekers cases.
Asylum seekers cases at least have the right of being heard by the court.
Moreover, all the other cases who weren’t processes through expedited removal
act get the right to due process in an immigrant court, where later will be
debated and decided if the individual has a legal claim to stay in the United
States soil.
The
right to legal counsel is another right that has been denied to immigrants.
The Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution says that in every
criminal prosecution, the accused have the right to have a counsel for his/her
defense. Moreover, the Supreme Court ruled in 1963 that if a person is poor
and he/her cannot afford to pay and hire an attorney, the government have to
provide the individual with one. This right has been denied several times to
immigrants because most deportation cases are civil cases instead of criminal
cases. Because of this, the right to legal counsel sometimes doesn’t apply to
some cases. Due to the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy, now most
illegal border crossings are treated as criminal cases, except parents who
cross illegally the border with their children. There was a public outcry
because of the separation of the families in the border. After all this situation,
the Customs and Border Protection announced that the agency stopped referring
parents for prosecution, but there were other immigrants that will be charged
with a crime. These immigrants weren’t either going to have the right to
counsel because the government is only required to give counsel to those
individuals accused of a felony. Crossing the border illegally is considered a
misdemeanor and no a felony. Even though, the law says that anyone facing
criminal charge has the right to counsel.
The right to be with your family is one of
the principal rights that all people should have. The legal right to family
integrity or family reunification have been a right pointed for too many
critics. This right is not in the Constitution of the United States, but it
was established in the twenty centuries through court rulings. A very basic
right that people should have it’s the one to be with their family and commune
with them. There are only a few situations where the government have the right
to split up families, such as cases where children are abused or their parents
didn’t care about them. Even in those mention cases, the government cannot
separate these families if there isn’t a legal process done before.
Another
fundamental right to every person in this country is the right to education.
The Constitution doesn’t include any educational right, but there are other
sections that apply for considering if an undocumented immigrant has the right
to get an education and go to school, especially children. The Supreme Court ruled in
the case Plyler v. Doe that since the 14th Amendment
establishes that the government has to offer equal protection of the laws to
all individuals in the soil of the United States, then undocumented immigrant
children have the same rights that citizen children to access to a free and
public education.
The right against
unreasonable search and seizure is established in the Fourth Amendment of the
Constitution. This law should apply to citizen and noncitizen because the Fourth
Amendment expresses that “… the right of the people to be secure in their
persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and
seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue…” (“Fourth Amendment”).
This right is applied to people, no matter if you are citizen or immigrant, it
applies to all of us, but there is an exception for this right known as the
“border search exception”. This exception didn’t come with Trump presidency,
this exception has been established since the first Congress. The Congress
passed this law and allowed searches at the border with the purpose of
collecting duties.
After all these
problems related to immigration and the legal rights of undocumented immigrants
President Barack Obama announced his Immigration Accountability Executive
Actions in 2014, with the purpose of solving the immigrants’ situations. One of
his first actions was to extend the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
(DACA) program established in 2012 for the Department of Homeland Security
known as DHS. With DACA people could apply for work permissions and could go to
colleges and universities. Moreover, in 2014 another program was established by
DHS. This new program known as DAPA program (Deferred Action for Parents of
Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents) were like DACA and offered similar
benefits for parents of citizens and lawful permanent residents. DAPA “would
exempt from immigration enforcement nearly four million illegal immigrants who
are the parents of citizens or lawful permanent residents” (Blackman 79). These
programs unleashed great controversies due to DACA and DAPA were executives’
actions and not new legislation from Congress. Texas and some other states
started to debate that President Barack Obama was overstepping his legal bounds
with the implementation of these programs. This situation led to the case United States v. Texas, a Supreme Court Case that
was resolved in 2016 (Schutrum-Boward 1194). Several
states including Texas were against the DAPA program and they sued to prevent
its implementation. These states argued that this new program was violating the
Administrative Procedure Act because it didn’t go through any notice process.
Judge Andrew Hanen
of the Federal District Court in Brownsville, Texas issued in 2015 a court
order that stopped temporarily DACA and DAPA. United States v. Texas was
a case that brought an important implication in the United States immigration
policy. The significance of this case is based on the fact that the legitimacy
of all the laws that restrict immigrants, with the intention of protecting the
American people interests, are at stake now.
Works Cited
- Blackman, Josh. “Supreme Court of the United States.” Cato Supreme Court Review, Jan. 2015, pp. 79–100. EBSCOhost, dcccd.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.dcccd.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=119420878&site=ehost-live.
- “Fifth Amendment.” Legal Information Institute > U.S. Constitution, www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/fifth_amendment. Accessed 10 Dec. 2018.
- “Fourth Amendment.” Legal Information Institute, www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/fourth_amendment#. Accessed 11 Dec. 2018.
- Rocha, Rene R., et al. “Immigration Enforcement and the Redistribution of Political Trust.” Journal of Politics, vol. 77, no. 4, Oct. 2015, pp. 901–913. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1086/681810.
- Schutrum-Boward, Daniel R. “United States v. Texas and Supreme Court Immigration Jurisprudence: A Delineation of Acceptable Immigration Policy Unilaterally Created by The Executive Branch.” Maryland Law Review, vol. 76, no. 4, June 2017, pp. 1193–1221. EBSCOhost, dcccd.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.dcccd.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=124007464&site=ehost-live.
- Zong, Jie, et al. “Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants and Immigration in the United States.” MPI Migration Policy Institute, 8 Feb. 2018, www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested-statistics-immigrants-and-immigration-united-states. Accessed 9 Dec. 2018.
Updated 21 March 2026
Update note: This article was written in late 2018 and reflects the legal and political landscape of that period. Readers should be aware of several significant developments since publication.
DACA: The article describes DACA as ongoing. Since 2018, DACA has been subject to extensive litigation. The Supreme Court ruled in Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California (2020) that the Trump administration’s attempt to rescind DACA was procedurally flawed. However, in Texas v. United States (5th Cir. 2022 and ongoing), federal courts have found DACA itself to be unlawful, and the programme has been in a legally precarious state, with no new applications being accepted following a 2021 district court ruling. As of 2024–2025, DACA remains subject to active litigation and its long-term status is uncertain. Readers should consult current sources before relying on statements about DACA’s availability.
DAPA: The article implies DAPA remained in dispute as of writing. In fact, the Obama administration formally withdrew DAPA in June 2017, and it never came into effect. It is no longer a live programme.
Expedited removal: The article describes expedited removal as applying to those present for less than two years and within 100 miles of the border. The Trump administration expanded expedited removal in 2019 to apply anywhere in the United States to those present for less than two years, though this expansion faced legal challenge. The Biden administration scaled this back. Further changes occurred under subsequent administrations. The precise scope of expedited removal has shifted and readers should verify the current rules.
Family separation and zero-tolerance policy: The zero-tolerance policy described in the article was formally ended by executive order in June 2018, shortly before this article was written, though litigation and policy disputes relating to family separation continued for several years afterwards.
Constitutional principles: The core constitutional principles discussed — including the application of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments to non-citizens, the ruling in Plyler v. Doe, and the border search exception — remain accurate statements of established US constitutional law.
This article is best understood as a historical snapshot of the legal and political position in late 2018. The constitutional foundations it describes remain broadly sound, but the specific policy and programme landscape has changed materially since publication.
