Trump DOJ drops Biden-era legal challenge to Texas border security law

The Trump administration is moving to drop a Biden-era legal challenge to a Texas immigration law that allows state and local police to arrest people suspected of illegally crossing the U.S. border into Texas.

The Justice Department filed a voluntary dismissal of the federal government’s challenge to the Texas law, known as SB 4, on Tuesday, though legal challenges by two immigrants’ rights groups, American Gateways and Las America Immigrant Advocate Center, are set to continue with a July trial, according to a report from Fox 7.

At issue is Texas’ controversial 2023 bill making it a state crime to illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border into Texas, with the state granting local law enforcement officers the power to arrest individuals they observe illegally crossing the border as well as providing for criminal penalties for those who admitted to illegally crossing the border.

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President Donald Trump has reversed several Biden-era immigration policies. (Donald Trump 2024 campaign)

The law also allows for a judge to step in and drop the charges against a migrant who agrees to return to Mexico.

While state lawmakers reasoned that the law was made necessary by former President Joe Biden’s lax policies on border security, the Biden administration pushed back against the state with legal challenges. Most notably, the Biden administration argued that the Texas law violated the constitution, which grants only the federal government the power to regulate immigration.

Then-President Joe Biden speaks with U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers as he visits the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, on Jan. 8, 2023. (JIM WATSON/AFP)

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“Because SB 4 is unconstitutional and will disrupt the federal government’s operations, we request that Texas forbear in its enforcement,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton wrote in a letter to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, as the Republican governor weighed signing the bill, adding that “the United States intends to file suit to enjoin the enforcement of SB 4,” according to a CBS News report.

Abbott would go on to sign the legislation, sparking the current legal challenges.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed SB 4 into law in 2023. (AP Photo/LM Otero, File)

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Meanwhile, the border has fallen eerily silent in the weeks since President Donald Trump took office, with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents recording record-low numbers of encounters with illegal migrants at the southwest border.

According to CBP data, the agency encountered just over 8,000 migrants at the southwest border in February 2025, down over 90% from the totals seen the prior year.