The Biden administration has not sued. It did win a Supreme Court ruling that it could take down the razor wire that Texas has deployed in Shelby Park and elsewhere, which the administration said has led to drowning deaths among migrants. It has now cut razor wire in some sections of the border, but not in Shelby Park, which it can’t access.
Three Biden administration officials said the Supreme Court’s recent razor wire ruling was a win in federal government’s fight with Texas over Shelby Park, but they concede it does not explicitly give control of the area back to Border Patrol.
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The three Biden administration officials told NBC News they do not want a confrontation between Border Patrol and Texas National Guard, but they still consider legal action a tool they might deploy. Shortly after Texas started blocking the Border Patrol from accessing Shelby Park, a mother and two children drowned while crossing the Rio Grande. The officials say they might have been saved if Border Patrol had been able to operate its equipment to surveil the river and respond to migrants in distress.
For now, however, optics mean the administration is holding fire, said a former Department of Homeland Security official. The official said that between the fight to pass a border bill, defend Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in an impeachment fight, and other lawsuits challenging Texas, taking on the Republican-led state would ignite another fire at a time when the administration wants to appear tougher on border security.
Yeah, not what we want to be supporting. The Posse Comitatus act is there for a reason. I’d rather we don’t start supporting use of the federal military as law enforcement.
And I hate to say it, but pretty sure the reason they haven’t been activated federally is because they’re worried calling that bluff might not work out well and escalate the confrontation, potentially leading to something worse.
Frankly this is awful. But also something manufactured to sound a lot worse. From a states rights perspective this isn’t that different from states legalizing marijuana while it’s federally controlled and illegal.
That would only be true if the state then sent armed agents to prevent the FBI from arresting a pot dealer. Having different rules is vastly different from claiming territory and excluding the federal government.