Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a bill into law Monday that criminalizes illegal entry into the border state from anywhere but a port of entry, exerting state jurisdiction over what is normally a federal matter.

The bill creates a misdemeanor offense for violation of the statute and a felony crime for multiple offenses. It also empowers state magistrate judges to hear immigration cases and issue removal orders in addition to giving law enforcement the responsibility of ensuring compliance with the law.

The new law includes several exceptions on where enforcement can take place, restricting police from enforcing the law in places of worship, public or private schools, health care facilities, or similar facilities providing services to sexual assault survivors.

An additional bill, Senate Bill 3, was also signed into law to provide over $1.5 billion in state funding for the costs of implementing the new criminal statute.

The law is the latest development in a series of confrontations between Texas and the federal government over illegal entry. Governor Abbott won a case earlier this year over a 1,000-foot-long floating barrier in the Rio Grande installed to prevent border crossings when a federal appeals court stayed a lower court’s removal order. A more recent case concerning the removal of razor wire fencing on the border handed a victory to Governor Abbott before a later decision was made in favor of federal officials cutting the fencing in special circumstances.

The state law sets up the biggest confrontation yet as immigration enforcement in the US has generally been a responsibility given solely to the federal government. A similar law was passed in Arizona in 2010 before being struck down in Arizona v. US, where the US Supreme Court held that federal law preempted state attempts to criminalize and enforce illegal immigration laws on a state level.

Reaction against the laws has been swift with Texas Democrats calling the bill “the most extreme anti-immigrant state bill in the United States,” and immigrant rights groups have sued to halt the law. Governor Abbott, on the other hand, has touted the bill as a bulwark against “the tidal wave of illegal entry into Texas” and laid the blame for the surge of migration on Biden administration policies.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador condemned the bill as a violation of migrant rights to due process and said that “the Government of Mexico categorically rejects any measure that allows state or local authorities to detain and return nationals or foreigners to Mexican territory.”

Undocumented immigration into the US has spiked over the last few years with 2.5 million migrants entering the US in 2023, topping the previous high from 2022. Entry demographics have shifted, with higher numbers of Venezuelans, families and certain Central American countires irregularly entering the US.