A favorite argument of progressives against many laws disproportionately violated by minorities has been rejected as Texas's ban on sanctuary cities has been unanimously upheld by a three-judge panel of a federal court of appeals.  Reversing a federal judge in San Antonio who had blocked implementation of Texas's ban on sanctuary cities, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld most of the law.  As a result, Texas now "requires police chiefs and sheriffs to cooperate with federal immigration officials, and allows the police to question the immigration status of anyone they arrest."

One element of the law, however, was  held unconstitutional:

... a clause that prohibits local officials from "endorsing" policies that limit immigration enforcement.  Officials can be forbidden to enact or enforce such policies, the panel ruled, but a ban on endorsements violates the First Amendment.  The judges upheld all other parts of the law, rejecting opponents' arguments that, among other things, it failed to adequately define the prohibited conduct and would open the door to racial profiling.

The Texas law is in some ways a mirror image of California's sanctuary state law, which bans state and local authorities from responding to detainer requests from ICE and likewise raises First Amendment problems by making it a crime for private employers to cooperate with federal authorities in identifying illegal aliens in the workplace.  A separate California law also veers into questionable territory by demanding that state officials inspect federal detention facilities.

Rick Moran sagely observes that resisting deferral immigration policy (which the Constitution explicitly assigns to the federal government, not states) is the only area in which progressives favor application of the Tenth Amendment.