Over the last 3 months, anytime we report about a state opting out of a federal program (any program, it seems, whether it’s marijuana prohibition or mass surveillance, for example), we get aggressively attacked by people who claim that “states are required to help the feds enforce federal law, or they’ll lose ALL federal funding.” Generally, we’re told this in the frame of wanting to force states to help enforce federal immigration laws.
Texas, however, is taking a different approach. Instead of asking the feds to force localities to enforce federal immigration law, they’re working to pass a state law to require political subdivisions of the state to enforce federal immigration law.
Whether that’s good policy or bad policy for Texas is up to Texas. But it’s a decision for Texas, not Washington D.C.
