Texas’s border standoff with the Biden administration shows no signs of waning, despite a Supreme Court decision last week permitting federal officials to remove razor wire planted by the state’s government along the Rio Grande. Indeed, on Monday, Texas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick vowed to step up the fortifications. “We are putting up wire…everywhere we can. We will continue. We will not stop,” he told Fox News. “If they cut it, we will replace it.”
Alongside the razor wire, Texas has deployed members of its National Guard to lock down a park in Eagle Pass. The site, which sits opposite the Rio Grande from Piedras Negras, Mexico, is a popular migrant crossing point. Three migrants drowned there earlier this month, shortly after Texas first blockaded the area.
While warding off migrants is the stated purpose of the Texas National Guardsmen deployed to Eagle Pass, they also are intended to act as a martial warning to the Biden administration, as noted by Patrick. “I was down [in Eagle Pass] Friday with our troops to thank them, support them, and also to stand with them in the event the Biden administration did send Border Patrol there,” he said in the Fox News interview. “Wisely, they did not…. We don’t want a confrontation, but we want this border secure.” But a confrontation with the federal government appears to be precisely the goal. So far, Texas has received support from 25 Republican governors and 26 Republican attorneys general—all undeterred by decades of legal precedent that afford the federal government near-total control over US immigration policy.
The Supreme Court affirmed these powers as recently as 2012 when it sided with the Obama administration after Arizona passed a law targeting undocumented immigrants in the state that would have usurped federal authority. “It is fundamental that foreign countries concerned about the status, safety, and security of their nationals in the United States must be able to confer and communicate on this subject with one national sovereign,” the Court wrote at the time, “not the 50 separate States.”
In a letter addressed to President Joe Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Monday, the coalition of attorneys general backing Texas set out to skirt such precedent by mapping a factually dubious argument. They accused Biden and Mayorkas of neglecting their constitutional duty to protect states from foreign invaders, thus opening the door for Texas to lawfully flout federal authority. “States have an independent duty to defend against invasion,” the attorneys general wrote, adding, “Your Administration is helping individuals complete their illegal entry into the United States.”
Of course, even lacking requisite paperwork, the migrants entering Texas and other border states in no way constitute an invading force. But given the conservative supermajority currently in charge of the Supreme Court, there is a distinct possibility that the Court could side with Texas should it choose to take up the matter in the future. After all, the Court’s 5-4 ruling in favor of the Biden administration was only temporary. It also did not address the use of Texas National Guardsmen to defy the federal government.
Should Biden take matters into his own hands and federalize the state’s troops, Texas governor Greg Abbott purportedly has another counter in store. “I am prepared—in the event that they do make such a blunder—to make sure that Texas will be able to continue to secure our border,” he told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday.
