The Justice Department warned Texas on Thursday that it plans to sue over a new state law that would allow local police to make immigration arrests – the latest flash point in the nation’s political and policy battles over border policy and illegal immigration.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott last week signed into law S.B. 4, which authorizes local and state police to arrest undocumented immigrants and empowers state judges to order such people removed from the country.

Abbott said the statute will “help stop the tidal wave of illegal entry into Texas, add additional funding to build more border wall and crack down on human smuggling.”

Federal courts, however, have long held that immigration enforcement is the responsibility of the federal government, not state or local authorities – a view that the Supreme Court upheld when it struck down parts of an Arizona law in 2012.

In the letter sent Thursday to Abbott, senior Justice Department official Brian Boynton said that if Texas implements the law when it is due to take effect in March, doing so would violate the Constitution.

Because the law “is unconstitutional and will disrupt the federal government’s operations, we request that Texas forbear in its enforcement,” Boynton wrote. He said the department “intends to file suit to enjoin the enforcement of SB 4 unless Texas agrees to refrain from enforcing the law. The United States is committed to both securing the border and ensuring the processing of noncitizens.” The Texas law, Boynton’s letter said, “is contrary to these goals.”

Boynton gave Texas a deadline of Wednesday to respond to the warning.

Immigration policy has long been a flash point between Republicans and Democrats, and Congress has tried and failed for years to address the issue. Donald Trump made cracking down on illegal immigration a central focus of his administration and has vowed to do so again if reelected in 2024.

Civil rights groups filed their own lawsuit over the Texas law last week.

The issue shows the degree to which immigration – long considered a national political issue – is increasingly a subject of debate within border states, which are overwhelmed with new arrivals, as well as states much farther north, where busloads of migrants have arrived needing assistance.

There were more than 2 million illegal crossings at the southwest border with Mexico in each of the past two fiscal years, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Border crossings have surged in the second half of the year since dropping sharply in June, with migrants from around the globe entering from Mexico to seek asylum, economic opportunities or a new life in the United States.

Thursday’s letter is the latest jab in a series of fights over immigration between Texas and the Biden administration. The Republican-run state is already embroiled in a court battle with the Justice Department over razor-wire border fencing installed by Texas officials.

The record surge in border crossings has reverberated across the country, with Democratic-led cities such as New York, Washington and Chicago struggling to address the needs of tens of thousands of new arrivals.

On multiple days this month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has reported more than 10,000 daily encounters with migrants who entered illegally. The agency last week closed vital commercial rail crossings in El Paso and Eagle Pass, Texas, after thousands of migrants traveling on freight trains to the U.S. border waded across the Rio Grande en masse. CBP also has shut down a busy pedestrian crossing near San Diego and other border checkpoints, saying it needs its officers to help overwhelmed U.S. Border Patrol agents.

Republicans, and Abbott in particular, have faulted the Biden administration for the influx of migrants and say the new law is necessary to do what the federal government has not.

“President Biden has repeatedly refused to enforce federal immigration laws already on the books and do his job to secure the border,” Abbott said in a statement earlier this month, vowing to take the fight “all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.”

On Wednesday, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met in the Mexican capital and agreed to form a working group to jointly confront the record numbers of undocumented immigrants arriving at the southern U.S. border.

López Obrador said in a statement posted on social media that “important agreements were achieved.”

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