Democratic representatives ask for next March’s event to be relocated to a different state in protest of SB4, which was signed into law last month

Amid a growing backlash over Texas’s stringent new immigration law, two US senators have called for the SXSW festival to leave Austin.

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A letter to the organiser of the major annual music and technology event sent by the Democratic senators Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada asks for next March’s event to be relocated to a different state “until the recent anti-immigrant SB4 law is repealed”.

Signed into law last month amid fierce protests, SB4 threatens to criminalize members of law enforcement who do not comply with requests to hold detained immigrants for federal pick-up, in effect banning so-called sanctuary cities. It also empowers individual officers to ask about the immigration status of people they detain. In the letter, the senators call it “one of the most extreme anti-immigrant and discriminatory state laws signed to date”.

In a statement, Roland Swenson, the CEO and co-founder of SXSW, said he agreed with criticism of the bill but “we will stay here and continue to make our event inclusive while fighting for the rights of all”.



Several Texas cities and civil rights groups have filed lawsuits aimed at blocking the measure, which goes into effect on 1 September. Its advocates describe it as a “law and order bill”, but critics – including sheriffs in some of Texas’s biggest urban areas – argue it will harm relations between police and immigrant communities and is motivated by the kind of nativist prejudice unleashed by Trump’s rise to power.

The American Immigration Lawyers Association (Aila) announced on Wednesday that it is moving its 2018 conference out of the Dallas suburb of Grapevine and into another state as a protest against SB4. According to the Aila, the event has more than 3,000 attendees and is the country’s largest annual gathering of immigration lawyers and legal professionals.

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More boycotts may follow after Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, said on Tuesday that he is recalling lawmakers for a special session next month with an agenda that includes passing a “bathroom bill” to limit use of facilities by transgender people. Leading technology companies and the Texas Association of Business are among those to have criticized the proposal. When North Carolina passed a similar bill in 2016, it was hit with economic and cultural repercussions estimated by the Associated Press – before the law was largely repealed in March – to risk costing the state more than $3.76bn in lost business over 12 years.