Editor-in-Chief and CEO of The Tennessee Star Michael Patrick Leahy and Crom Carmichael, original all-star panelist of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy, discussed on Monday a bill recently introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives that would give state attorneys general a greater standing to sue the Department of Homeland Security when it fails to enforce existing immigration laws passed by Congress.
The bill, H.R.7322, was introduced by U.S. Representatives Chip Roy (R-TX-21) and Dan Bishop (R-NC-08) and is called the SUE for Immigration Enforcement Act.
The bill comes after the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Texas last year that states lacked standing to challenge the Biden administration’s failure to enforce immigration laws.
While Leahy argued that the bill is a “good law that should pass at any time,” Carmichael explained how the current Democrat majority in the Senate will kill the bill.
“I’m not saying that bill will never pass, I’m saying that it won’t pass with the House and the Senate makeup today, especially with a Democrat president who would then veto the bill if somehow it did get 60 votes,” Carmichael said on Monday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy.
Carmichael went on to note that even if the bill did not pass, the Supreme Court’s ruling in United States v. Texas “cuts both ways,” meaning if former President Donald Trump is elected to the presidency, he would then have power over immigration policy.
“If Trump becomes president, then that ruling will mean that he has great power that perhaps he didn’t think he had before. That type of ruling can cut both ways because it diminished the power of the states in favor of the executive, which, at this time, we don’t like, but if Trump is the next president, and he wants to assert executive power in the name of immigration and a state tries to sue him, there’s a Supreme Court ruling that says states don’t have this standing,” Carmichael said.
Getting back to the bill, Leahy said its passage would help prevent the “existential problem” of immigration in the nation.
“It addresses the problem of immigration and that is the existential problem that the United States of America faces right now,” Leahy said. “I think this is, under any president of the United States, this is a very good law, and it would be the kind of law that should be in effect and would prevent this kind of problem from happening again.”
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Gov Greg Abbott at the Southern Border” by Gov. Greg Abbott.
