Supreme Court lets Texas immigration law take effect as legal battle continues
Texas' SB4 law, which would allow the state to detain and jail migrants, is allowed to take effect while the Biden administration challenges it in court.
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Camilo Montoya-Galvez is the Immigration Correspondent at CBS News, where his reporting is featured across multiple programs and platforms, including national broadcast shows, CBS News 24/7, CBSNews.com and the organization's social media accounts.
Montoya-Galvez has received numerous awards for his groundbreaking and in-depth reporting on immigration, including a national Emmy Award, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award and several New York Emmy Awards.
Over several years, he has built one of the leading and most trusted national sources of immigration news, filing breaking news pieces, as well as exclusive reports and in-depth feature stories on the impact of major policy changes.
Montoya-Galvez was the first reporter to obtain and publish the names of the Venezuelan deportees sent by the U.S. to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador, with little to no due process. Using that list, he co-produced a "60 Minutes" report that found most of the deported men did not have apparent criminal records, despite the administration's claims that they were all dangerous criminals and gang members. Montoya-Galvez was also the first journalist to interview Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador and imprisoned at the CECOT prison.
In 2025 alone, Montoya Galvez broke dozens of other exclusive stories. He disclosed the internal Trump administration plan to revoke the legal status of hundreds of thousands of migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela; landed the first national network sit-down interviews with the current heads of ICE and Border Patrol; and obtained government data showing that illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2025 plummeted to the lowest level since 1970 amid Trump's crackdown.
Montoya Galvez's North Star is to cover immigration with nuance and fairness, in a nonpartisan, comprehensive and compelling way that respects the dignity of those at the center of this story
Before joining CBS News, Montoya-Galvez spent over two years as an investigative unit producer and assignment desk editor at Telemundo's television station in New York City. His work at Telemundo earned three New York Emmy Awards. Earlier, he was the founding editor of After the Final Whistle, an online bilingual publication featuring stories that highlight soccer's role in contemporary society.
Montoya-Galvez was born in Cali, Colombia's third-largest city, and raised in New Jersey. He earned a bachelor's degree in Media and Journalism Studies and Spanish from Rutgers University.
Texas' SB4 law, which would allow the state to detain and jail migrants, is allowed to take effect while the Biden administration challenges it in court.
The U.S. has not yet seen a spike in maritime migration in the Caribbean that would trigger longstanding contingency plans that include housing migrants at Guantanamo Bay, two U.S. officials say.
Justice Samuel Alito extended an order barring Texas officials from detaining and jailing migrants under a new state law as a court fight plays out.
SB4 would allow Texas law enforcement at the state and local levels to arrest, jail and prosecute migrants suspected of entering the U.S. without authorization.
The dispute centered on a program that allows up to 30,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to enter the U.S. each month.
President Biden used his State of the Union remarks on Thursday to forcefully call on Republican lawmakers in Congress to pass a bipartisan immigration compromise that stalled last month.
The increase in illegal entries from January indicates that migration is rebounding heading into the spring, when migrant arrivals have spiked in recent years.
The state law known as SB4 would empower Texas officials to stop, jail and prosecute migrants on state criminal charges of illegal entry or reentry.
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Undeterred by miles of border wall, violent Mexican cartels and treacherous terrain with extreme temperatures, migrants have been crossing into the Tucson sector by the hundreds, and sometimes by the thousands, each day.
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