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Texas’ plan to arrest migrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally is on hold while the U.S. Supreme Court considers a challenge to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s latest move over immigration. The nation’s highest court has put a pause on law through Monday at 5 p.m. Eastern over a lawsuit led by the Justice Department. The department argues that Texas is overstepping the federal government’s immigration by attempting to arrest migrants and empower state judges to order them to leave the U.S. A federal judge in Texas blocked the law last month in a sweeping rejection of the measure.

The Republican senator who gave the party’s response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address used a harrowing account of a young woman’s sexual abuse to attack his border policies, but the rapes did not happen in the U.S. or during the Biden administration. Alabama Sen. Katie Britt in the GOP response criticized current immigration policies, describing how she had met a woman at the U.S.-Mexico border who was raped thousands of times in a sex trafficking operation run by cartels, starting at age 12. Documents show the victim has previously spoken publicly about the abuse happening in Mexico from 2004 to 2008 — not in the United States during the Biden administration.

President Joe Biden says he regrets using the term “illegal" during his State of the Union address to describe the suspected killer of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley. Facing frustration from some in his party for the use of the term to describe people who arrived or are living in the U.S. illegally, Biden on Saturday expressed remorse. He says he didn’t want to demean any group, and sought to differentiate himself from former President Donald Trump. In an interview with MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart, Biden said, “I shouldn’t have used illegal, it’s undocumented.” The term was once common but is less so today, particularly among Democrats who more fully embraced immigrant rights’ issues during Trump’s presidency.

A federal judge has upheld the use of an immigration program that allows up to 30,000 migrants from four countries into the U.S. per month. The ruling Friday came in response to a lawsuit from Republican-leaning states that argued the humanitarian parole program “created a shadow immigration system.” They also said the Biden administration program economically burdened states receiving migrants with rising costs of health care, education, and public safety. Advocates for the federal government countered that migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who are admitted through the policy help the U.S. farm labor shortage and reduce the number of people immigrating illegally.

Christian voters and faith leaders have long been in the frontlines of providing assistance to migrants. But priorities diverge when it comes to support for immigration policies, from border security to legalization options for migrants already in the U.S. Fueled by unprecedented numbers of asylum seekers and illegal border crossings, immigration has risen to a top concern for Americans in this presidential election year. According to a survey released this week by the Pew Research Center, majorities of white Catholics and Protestants, both evangelical and nonevangelical, consider that the big influx at the U.S.-Mexican border is a crisis for the United States. How to address it is where the differences emerge, ranging from prioritizing enforcing the law to humanitarian aid.

The guest list for President Joe Biden's State of the Union address speaks volumes about what Democrats and Republicans want to focus on as the 2024 election season heats up. Biden and fellow Democrats have invited several health care providers and women whose lives have been impacted by stricter abortion laws following the Supreme Court ruling that stripped away constitutional protections for abortion. Republicans have invited guests who put a heavy focus on the nation’s broken immigration system, an issue that voters say is a central concern ahead of the November election. The guests invited to sit in the galleries for Thursday's speech also include some people whom nearly everyone in hyper-partisan Washington should be able to cheer.

Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs has vetoed a bill approved by the Republican-controlled Arizona Legislature that would have made it a crime for noncitizens to enter the state through Mexico at a location other than a port entry. The measure was approved late last month along party lines as Arizona has emerged as a popular illegal border crossing point. It would have let local law enforcement arrest non-U.S. citizens who enter Arizona from anywhere but a lawful entrance point. In a letter Monday, Hobbs said the measure doesn’t secure the border and was burdensome for law enforcement and the state court system.

A union of immigration judges has been ordered to get supervisor approval to speak to anyone outside the Justice Department, potentially quieting a frequent critic of heavily backlogged immigration courts in an election year. An umbrella organization that includes the National Association of Immigration Judges calls the order “outrageous” and “un-American.” News organizations frequently seek comment from the judges union for stories on how the courts operate. An exploding backlog that tops 3 million cases has judges taking five to seven years to decide cases. The order cites a 2020 decision to strip the judges of collective bargaining rights.