citizens

Stefanie Lindquist, Arizona State University The new Texas law that bans most abortions uses a method employed by Texas and other states to enforce racist Jim Crow laws in the 19th and 20th centuries that aimed to disenfranchise African Americans. Rather than giving state officials, such as the police, the power to enforce the law, the Texas law instead allows enforcement by “any person, other than an officer or employee of a state or local governmental entity in this state.” This enforcement mechanism relies solely on citizens, rather than on government officials, to enforce the law. This approach to enforcement is a legal end-run that privatizes a state’s enforcement of the law. By using this method of enforcement, state officials are shielded from being sued for violating the Constit...

The Mississippi immigration raid detained hundreds and left children stranded on the first day of school. It also evoked a massive humanitarian response in a state not traditionally friendly to immigrants. When federal agents engineered the nation’s largest single-state immigration raid at multiple chicken processing plants in Mississippi, a scrappy network of immigrant activists knew their work was about to get much harder. Mississippi has never been a hotbed for immigration advocacy, despite a growing immigrant population working in its food processing and hospitality industries. The small band of migrant advocates in the state operate in hostile territory, and they are woefully under financed. That changed last week after the Department of Homeland Security a...

Tag: citizens

In Texas Jim Crow Tactics Reborn, Deputizing Citizens To Enforce Abortion Law, Legally Suspect Provisions

When ICE Hit Mississippi, Its Citizens Showed Up for Immigrant Families