A di­vid­ed Supreme Court on Tues­day lift­ed a stay on a Texas law that gives po­lice broad pow­ers to ar­rest mi­grants sus­pect­ed of cross­ing the bor­der il­le­gal­ly, while a le­gal bat­tle over im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ty plays out.

The Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion is su­ing to strike down the mea­sure, ar­gu­ing it’s a clear vi­o­la­tion of fed­er­al au­thor­i­ty that would hurt in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions and cre­ate chaos in ad­min­is­ter­ing im­mi­gra­tion law. Texas has ar­gued it has a right to take ac­tion over what au­thor­i­ties have called an on­go­ing cri­sis at the south­ern bor­der.

Op­po­nents say the law, known as Sen­ate Bill 4, the most dra­mat­ic at­tempt by a state to po­lice im­mi­gra­tion since an Ari­zona law more than a decade ago, por­tions of which were struck down by the Supreme Court. Crit­ics have al­so said the Texas law could lead to civ­il rights vi­o­la­tions and racial pro­fil­ing.

A fed­er­al judge in Texas struck down the law in late Feb­ru­ary, but the 5th Cir­cuit Court of Ap­peals quick­ly stayed that rul­ing, lead­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to ap­peal to the Supreme Court.

The ma­jor­i­ty did not write a de­tailed opin­ion in the case, as it typ­i­cal in emer­gency ap­peals. But the de­ci­sion to let the law go in­to ef­fect drew dis­sents from lib­er­al jus­tices Ke­tan­ji Brown Jack­son, Ele­na Ka­gan and So­nia So­tomay­or.

So­tomay­or wrote in a blis­ter­ing dis­sent that al­low­ing Texas to en­force the law “in­vites fur­ther chaos and cri­sis” and “up­ends the fed­er­al-state bal­ance of pow­er that has ex­ist­ed for over a cen­tu­ry”

In a sep­a­rate dis­sent, Ka­gan wrote that the type of or­der en­tered by the 5th Cir­cuit “should not spell the dif­fer­ence be­tween re­spect­ing and re­vok­ing long-set­tled im­mi­gra­tion law.”

Jus­tice Amy Coney Bar­rett, joined by fel­low con­ser­v­a­tive Jus­tice Brett Ka­vanaugh, sug­gest­ed in a con­cur­ring opin­ion that her vote in favour of Texas stemmed from the tech­ni­cal­i­ties of the ap­peals process rather than agree­ment with the state on the sub­stance of the law.

“So far as I know, this Court has nev­er re­viewed the de­ci­sion of a court of ap­peals to en­ter — or not en­ter — an ad­min­is­tra­tive stay. I would not get in­to the busi­ness. When en­tered, an ad­min­is­tra­tive stay is sup­posed to be a short-lived pre­lude to the main event: a rul­ing on the mo­tion for a stay pend­ing ap­peal,” she wrote.

The 5th U.S. Cir­cuit Court of Ap­peals could po­ten­tial­ly block the mea­sure again, and ei­ther side can re­turn to the Supreme Court once the 5th Cir­cuit acts.

Texas Gov Greg Ab­bott said the rul­ing al­lows Texas to be­gin en­forc­ing the law, call­ing the de­ci­sion a “pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment” while not­ing that an ap­peals court is still weigh­ing whether the law is con­sti­tu­tion­al. He has pre­vi­ous­ly said Texas has a right to take ac­tion on the bor­der cri­sis.

The Texas De­part­ment of Crim­i­nal Jus­tice is “pre­pared to han­dle any in­flux in pop­u­la­tion” spokes­woman Aman­da Her­nan­dez said in a state­ment.

Oth­er Texas of­fi­cials sound­ed a cau­tious note.

“A lot of the lo­cal po­lice chiefs here, we don’t be­lieve it will sur­vive a con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge. It doesn’t look like it’s go­ing to, be­cause a Texas peace of­fi­cer is not trained. We have no train­ing what­so­ev­er to de­ter­mine whether an in­di­vid­ual is here in this coun­try, legal­ly,” said Sher­iff Ed­die Guer­ra of Hi­dal­go Coun­ty.

Guer­ra is al­so the pres­i­dent of the South­west­ern Bor­der Sher­iffs’ Coali­tion rep­re­sent­ing 31 bor­der coun­ties from Texas to Cal­i­for­nia.

The bat­tle over the Texas im­mi­gra­tion law is one of mul­ti­ple le­gal dis­putes be­tween Texas of­fi­cials and the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion over how far the state can go to pa­trol the Texas-Mex­i­co bor­der and pre­vent il­le­gal bor­der cross­ings.

Sev­er­al Re­pub­li­can gov­er­nors have backed Gov. Greg Ab­bott’s ef­forts, say­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is not do­ing enough to en­force ex­ist­ing im­mi­gra­tion laws.

The Supreme Court in 2012 struck down key parts of an Ari­zona law that would have al­lowed po­lice to ar­rest peo­ple for fed­er­al im­mi­gra­tion vi­o­la­tions, of­ten re­ferred to by op­po­nents as the “show me your pa­pers” bill. The di­vid­ed high court found then that the im­passe in Wash­ing­ton over im­mi­gra­tion re­form did not jus­ti­fy state in­tru­sion.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Mark Sher­man in Wash­ing­ton con­tributed to this re­port.