For years, Ken Paxton, Texas’s right-wing attorney general, has been trying to convince courts that he deserves a bigger say in federal immigration policy. Now some Democrats are lining up to give Paxton — and every other state attorney general — a veto over who gets detained and released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the authority to block people from certain countries from getting visas.

Immigration advocates warn against these under-scrutinized provisions in the Laken Riley Act, which passed the House of Representatives last week with support from dozens of Democrats and advanced to debate in the Senate on a bipartisan vote on Monday evening. Manipulatively named for a murdered nursing student, the bill stands to be Congress’s first contribution to the incoming Trump administration’s deportation campaign.

Immigration enforcement has always been the purview of the federal government — not the states. But as passed by the House, the bill authorizes every state attorney general to sue the secretary of homeland security, the U.S. attorney general, and the secretary of state over immigration decisions big and small. These provisions have gotten far less attention than the bill’s proposal to mandate detention for unauthorized immigrants arrested for shoplifting and theft.

So far, three Democrats have signed on as co-sponsors to the bill: Sens. Ruben Gallego of Arizona and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, plus Rep.

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