Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti has thrown his weight behind Texas in the legal scuffle over immigration enforcement, his office announced Wednesday. The Volunteer State's top lawyer joined counterparts from 22 other states in backing Texas's contentious SB4 law, which slaps criminal status on illegal crossings and empowers magistrates to send migrants packing back to their homelands.
"Tennessee stands with Texas as it protects its citizens from the ongoing federal failure to secure our southern border," Skrmetti stated, blasting what he called "federal open border policies" and insisting that until Uncle Sam tightens up, states have to grab the reins. The country is witnessing a coalition of AGs, those champions of their states' rights and safeguarding architects of the citizenry, stepping into the fray, Ohio and South Carolina swinging the lead on the new legal brief.
The amicus brief plants its feet firmly on the ground of state sovereignty and the sacred police power to legislate for public safety; the states' coalition is gutsy, they argue that the task to stem the tide of illegal immigration is theirs by right and responsibility, and they're not standing down, not while Federal bigwigs play hot potato with border security. A U.S. District Court previously blocked the Texas law, but the Fifth Circuit has since put a pin in that injunction, allowing SB4 to tiptoe back onto the stage pending further review.
Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming have all joined the tug-of-war in Texas' corner, Attorney General Skrmetti among them, banding together against a federal government and private plaintiffs they deem to be in the wrong—attorneys from sea to shining sea signing on the dotted line, to say in no uncertain terms, 'We back SB4'.
