The question of immigration in the United States of America cannot be analyzed at the whim of partisan passions, nor reduced to the passing noise of state-level political convenience. It is, first and foremost, a matter of national sovereignty, of constitutional authority, of public safety, and of the preservation of the Federation's juridical unity.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly known as ICE, is a federal agency whose mission must be respected and defended by all those who understand the importance of the Rule of Law ("o Estado de Direito"). Its action falls squarely within the proper domain of the Federal Government, especially when what is at stake is the enforcement of immigration laws, border security, the removal of foreign nationals in irregular status, and the protection of the national legal order.
This is not a state-level faculty, nor a competence subject to being annulled by the will of a governor, a state legislative assembly, a city council, or any local authority whatsoever. Immigration, by its very nature, belongs to the federal plane, since it involves the sovereignty of the nation, the integrity of its borders, internal security, and the uniformity of the law.
It must be stated without ambiguity: governors, state laws, local regulations, municipal authorities, or administrative bodies of a State have no jurisdiction to obstruct, limit, annul, or condition the legitimate enforcement of federal immigration laws. Jurisdictional and executive competence, in this matter, belongs primarily to the Federal Government.
A State may politically disagree. It may debate. It may turn to the competent courts. But it cannot substitute itself for the Union, nor decree that federal authority is suspended within its borders.
The American Constitution rests upon a clear legal hierarchy. The so-called Supremacy Clause enshrines the principle that the Constitution of the United States, along with federal laws validly enacted in conformity with it, constitute the supreme law of the land. Such a principle binds the States, even when their laws, public policies, or administrative preferences move in a different direction.
From this follows an elementary consequence, often forgotten: no State may block, obstruct, neutralize, or render inoperative the legitimate enforcement of a federal law. Political disagreement, however loud, confers no juridical power of veto. The governor of a State is not sovereign before the Union. He is a state authority, constitutionally limited, subject to the federal order, and barred from subverting the application of national laws.
To defend ICE, in this context, is not to defend arbitrariness; it is to defend the application of the law. It is to recognize that a nation cannot exist without borders, that a border has no meaning without enforcement, and that a law amounts to no more than rhetorical ornament if the State abdicates its execution. Federal authority in matters of immigration is not an aggression against the States; it is a necessary expression of national sovereignty.
Immigration has been repeatedly treated by American courts as a predominantly federal matter.
And such an understanding is perfectly comprehensible. The entry, presence, and removal of foreigners involves borders, nationality, internal security, foreign relations, and the very practical definition of sovereignty. It would be absurd to admit that fifty States could adopt fifty mutually incompatible policies, turning the constitutional order into an administrative patchwork ("uma manta de retalhos").
Federal authority is, naturally, no license for arbitrariness. ICE, like any organ of public power, is subject to the Constitution, to due process of law, to judicial oversight, and to the limits established by Congress. But such limitation operates within the constitutional order, not through acts of state political resistance. If there is abuse, it falls to the courts to correct it. If there is excess, it falls to the law to restrain it. What does not fall to a governor is to declare, by ideological convenience, that a federal authority has ceased to be capable of fulfilling its mission.
It is equally important to distinguish between limited administrative non-cooperation and effective obstruction. A State may, within certain limits, set its own priorities for its local resources. However, it cannot prevent federal agents from acting lawfully, nor can it transform its institutions into instruments of resistance against the enforcement of federal law. There is a profound difference between not assisting and sabotaging. The first may, in certain cases, be juridically debatable. The second is incompatible with constitutional supremacy.
More than that, state law does not override federal law in matters of immigration. No state provision, even if approved by a legislative majority or signed into law by a governor, may strip the federal authority of the competence vested in it by the Constitution and by the laws of Congress.
Whenever a state law and a constitutionally valid federal law come into conflict, the state law must yield. This is the essence of federal supremacy and of the juridical unity of the Republic.
The true contemporary problem lies in the attempt to convert political disagreement into institutional disobedience. When state authority seeks to substitute itself for the Federal Government in matters of immigration, it is no longer merely defending an opinion; it is challenging the very constitutional architecture of the Union. And when federal law is treated as mere recommendation, the Republic ceases to be governed by rules and comes instead to be governed by impulses.
A nation that does not control its borders abdicates, however partially, its own sovereignty. A State that seeks to prevent the Federal Government from enforcing the law places itself on a collision course with the constitutional order. And a society that confuses compassion with absence of law inadvertently prepares the erosion of public authority.
The question, therefore, is not whether each citizen agrees or disagrees with current immigration policy. That discussion belongs to the democratic forum, to Congress, to elections, and to public debate. The essential question is another: as long as the federal law exists and is constitutionally valid, it must be obeyed. And no governor, however popular, ideological, or combative, has the authority to nullify the supreme law of the Union.
ICE, in enforcing federal law, does not act as a foreign force within the States, but as a legitimate instrument of national authority. Respect for that authority is an indispensable condition for the Republic to preserve order, coherence, and sovereignty. The law cannot be selective. Authority cannot be optional. The border cannot be merely symbolic.
The constitutional order does not survive when every part of the power decides to obey only the rules it finds agreeable. It survives, rather, when all, including the States, governors, and local authorities, submit to the hierarchy of the law. Therein lies the difference between a serious Republic and a confederation of whims ("uma confederação de caprichos").
César DePaço
Businessman and Philanthropist
Consul ad honorem of Portugal from 2014 to 2020
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Summit Nutritionals International Inc.®
Founder and Chairman of the Board of The DePaço Foundation
Unwavering Defender of Law Enforcement and Conservative Principles