Thanks to the controversial Senate Bill 4 law enacted by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last year, 2024 has become a trying year for the trilateral relationship between the state of Texas, Mexico, and the federal government. 

As Prism previously reported, SB 4 creates new Texas state crimes related to migration outside of ports of entry and expands the state’s ability to carry out immigration enforcement in part by allowing local police to arrest individuals on suspicion of having crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without authorization. The law, which has repeatedly been challenged in the courts, essentially deputizes state police to carry out the functions of federal immigration agencies. The law was scheduled to take effect in March but is currently blocked while litigation proceeds. A ruling is expected this summer.

The pending fate of the law could mark a turning point in American immigration policy, though the consequences are already being felt. 

“Texas throws stones at the Statue of Liberty”

Aurum Monterrey, an industrial engineer who migrated from Nuevo León, Mexico, to Texas in search of better job opportunities, experienced Texas’ complicated political landscape firsthand while working as a bilingual restaurant operations manager. There were those who accepted him; those who attacked him for his skin color and language; verbal confrontations with Chicanos because he wore a Mexican soccer jersey; and that one time he was threatened by a criminal gang.  

“Texas throws stones at the Statue of Liberty … It’s an antithesis,” Monterrey said, explaining that Texas establishes “criminal profiles” based on country of origin and skin tone.

Ernesto Trozo, a naturalized citizen who arrived in Texas from Mexico during the administration of former President George W. Bush, has been in the U.S. long enough to see the ebb and flow of U.S. immigration policy. This includes the post-9/11 mass deportations and the implementation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Texas’ SB 4 is another wave of anti-immigrant policy. According to Trozo, it’s a “racist law.”   

“[I]n the sense that they can detain you based on your appearance, skin color, how you’re dressed, what you’re driving,” Trozo said. “On what basis are they going to detain you? What ideology does the policeman who is detaining you adhere to? How can it empower the most radical wing of the right in Texas to engage in this type of profiling? Based on what will you become suspicious? For mowing the lawn? For cooking?”

Given the rise in anti-Mexican rhetoric in recent years, chances are most Americans would be surprised to know that last year, Mexico became the U.S.’ top trading partner, with large American companies relocating to Mexican territory in search of more stable conditions. The 2020 United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), has strengthened trade between Mexico and the U.S. However, Abbott’s anti-immigrant policies have complicated these working relations. 

According to researcher Frida Nadiezda of CETYS University in Tijuana, Mexico, Abbott’s escalating border tactics have a negative economic impact.

“At the moment that the U.S. closes the border for any reason, the economy in the region collapses, and you can see it in Texas, California, or Arizona. When conservative governments decide to close the border, it negatively impacts both economies,” Nadiezda explained. “And even the most conservative merchants or owners of big companies protest this.”

Abbott’s Operation Lone Star (OLS), which uses taxpayer dollars for unprecedented border militarization, has caused serious problems with Texas’ neighbor Mexico. In 2022, Mexican authorities complained about Abbott’s order at four border crossings “to stop and inspect all tractor-trailers and buses crossing from Mexico to the United States, citing immigration control and border security and the need to prevent the smuggling of migrants and drugs.”

According to Mexico’s government, Abbott’s actions harmed binational trade, causing significant delays and loss of revenue. Relations between the two countries also worsened when Abbott defied President Joe Biden and the Supreme Court when he continued to implement OLS policies, namely the state’s use of razor wire between the Rio Grande and the 47-acre area known as Shelby Park located in Eagle Pass.

It remains to be seen how Mexico’s newly elected—and first woman—president, Claudia Sheinbaum, will respond to Abbott. However, her predecessor and mentor, outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), often used morning press conferences to criticize Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, urging Mexican-Americans in the U.S. not to vote for either. Like Texas, Florida has been economically impacted by DeSantis’ anti-immigrant laws, including one that further criminalizes undocumented workers, leading to labor shortages in the state’s agricultural industry. AMLO has also criticized SB 4 as “inhumane” and last year vowed to challenge the law. 

For Texas’ immigrant residents like Monterrey, who live in the part of the state that borders Mexico’s Nuevo León, there is frustration in knowing that commerce can traverse the region more freely than the people who inhabit the area. The Mexican immigrant said that you run the risk of being apprehended just for being near the border without government-issued identification. 

“It’s annoying. It’s invasive,” Monterrey said. “You must prove yourself all the time. So, even if the governor of Nuevo León acts Texan and goes on with his rhetoric that Texas and Nuevo León are sister states … those who are not white-skinned, that’s where they’ll struggle.”

While Mexican officials have condemned Abbott’s actions, the relationship between Mexico and the Biden administration is markedly different, according to Adam Isacson, the director for defense oversight at the research and advocacy organization the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).

“It has not affected the relationship between the two federal governments because the Biden administration officials are not using [anti-Mexican] rhetoric,” Isacson said. “If anything, it probably pushed the AMLO government a little closer to Biden because they’re seeing that all of this rhetoric is coming from Republican politicians or politicians aligned with Donald Trump. And so it makes them less inclined to want to work with a second Trump administration.”

The potential for SB 4 to move forward during a U.S. election year in which the Republican frontrunner is former President Trump—who led one of the most anti-immigrant administrations in modern American history—further stresses the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico. Sheinbaum has signaled that, like her predecessor, she values economic integration and mutually agreed upon immigration policies between the two countries, but a second Trump administration might change Mexico’s position to work closely with the U.S. While Trump has said that Abbott is on his vice president shortlist, Abbott has made it clear he’s interested in serving a fourth term as governor. It seems then that for the foreseeable future, anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies will remain a central part of Texas politics. 

Trozo said the effects of Trumpism in Texas will be longstanding. 

“[S]ince Trumpism emerged, a lot has changed, even among children, because they start commenting on things they’ve seen in the news, and many times, in the end, children don’t really know much, but they do start to bully. ‘Yes, build the wall,’ and as much as they are children, they start to sow that seed,” Trozo explained.

The impact of copycat laws 

As recently as April, Biden and Mexico’s outgoing president affirmed their commitment to “strengthening bilateral and regional cooperation that will benefit the people of the United States and Mexico.” The two administrations had a successful working relationship, but it was not without disagreement. 

According to Isacson, AMLO responded angrily to criticism regarding issues like corruption, human rights abuses, and drug trafficking. Mexico’s president also often said things intended to provoke the U.S. The Biden administration generally avoided responding to anything aggressively, but these sometimes tense exchanges meant that the two governments didn’t fully collaborate to address issues like energy and countering narcotics, Isacson said.

But the two governments did share at least one common objective: addressing Texas’ SB 4. 

“Mexico already is supporting the Justice Department’s litigation against SB 4,” Isacson said. “The Biden administration has already gone to federal court to overturn this law, and so is an ally in this legal effort. [Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has] even signed an amicus brief.” 

The AMLO government was characterized by its nationalist stance, but broadly, it has shared common objectives with the Biden administration on migration-related issues. Mexico’s president also significantly bolstered Biden among Mexican voters in the U.S. Demonstrations of support for AMLO during his visit to the United Nations in 2021 and outside The New York Times office earlier this year illustrated the president’s influence across borders. AMLO acknowledged Mexican immigrants’ efforts to thrive in America. No matter the future president of the U.S., Sheinbaum will likely follow in her mentor’s footsteps if for no other reason than to ensure Mexico’s political strength in the U.S. 

Abbott’s politics, on the other hand, have been disruptive to the relationship between Mexico and the U.S. Worse yet, SB 4 has spawned copycat laws in other states, increasing tensions with officials in Mexico and foreshadowing the future of immigration policy under a second Trump term. 

Anti-immigrant laws nationwide 

In March, Tennessee passed HB 2124/SB 2576, which requires local law enforcement to disclose to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) the immigration status of a person and also requires law enforcement to work with federal immigration agencies in the apprehension, detention, and removal of undocumented immigrants. Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena expressed her concerns in April about the Tennessee law’s implications for racial profiling and family separation. 

Groups like the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC) are already rolling out information sessions and otherwise working to warn immigrants in the state of the law’s wide-ranging consequences. 

“Even though HB2124/SB2576 became law, we will continue to fight for our communities,” TIRRC wrote on Facebook after the bill was passed. “Our security has never depended on the police or the State, and it never will. We need to educate, organize and equip ourselves to protect one another.” 

In Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds signed Senate File 2340, which would allow state law enforcement to arrest undocumented immigrants who were previously denied entry into the U.S. and would make it a crime for someone to attempt to enter Iowa after being previously deported or barred from entering the country. The Justice Department sued to block the law in May, and in June, an Iowa federal judge issued a preliminary injunction. 

The Des Moines Register reported that the bill’s floor manager, Rep. Steven Holt, said states must act to enforce immigration enforcement because the federal government has “abdicated its responsibilities.” Holt’s sentiment speaks to a larger trend fueled by SB 4 in which state and local governments are “attempting to create separate and harsher immigration enforcement systems outside of the federal government,” the Vera Institute reported. Beyond Texas, Tennessee, and Iowa, similar laws that weaponize local police against immigrants are under consideration in Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and West Virginia.

While the Biden administration can do little to prevent laws similar to Texas’ SB 4 from spreading, Isacson said Mexico’s government must prepare for the worst. 

“The main impact is that Mexico is going to be activating its consulates,” Isacson said, noting that there are more than 50 Mexican consulates in the U.S. “They’re going to be pouring a lot of resources into trying to protect their own citizens in those states.”