From the ACLU, this is at Liberty. I'm Kendall Cismayer, your host.

Last December, Texas lawmakers passed Senate Bill 4, one of the most extreme pieces of anti-immigrant legislation any state legislature has ever enacted.

Under SB4, local and state law enforcement can arrest people they suspect to have entered Texas without federal authorization.

It also permits Texas judges, who are not trained in immigration law, to order the deportation of

migrants to ports of entry along Texas's border with Mexico, regardless of which country they are

from. On top of all of this, police may charge individuals with a new state crime of illegal entry

or illegal re-entry and refusal to comply with deportation orders,

with some charges punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Since SB4 passed, a whirlwind of court orders have blocked it from going into effect,

allowed it to be reinforced for several hours, and then blocked it again, stoking mass

confusion. States do not have the constitutional authority to deport people, and an unconstitutional

law like SB4 only imposes added threats to migrants' livelihoods and path to asylum. Here to give us

the latest news on SB4, and fight against it is David Donati,

senior staff attorney at the ASEO of Texas working on immigration.

David, welcome to it Liberty and thank you so much for joining me.

I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Okay, so David, SB4 is all over the legal map. I want to talk about

its current state in just a second. But first, can you explain what the bill entails and where it came

from? Sure. So Texas Senate Bill 4 is a law passed by the Texas legislature during the fourth special legislative session.

Our governor, Greg Abbott, just has the ability to reconvene the legislature, if and when he so chooses.

And this legislative session was actually to pass school voucher programs as a gift to certain

political donors. But when it became quite clear that that wasn't going to happen,

...