United States President Joe Biden's administration tapped the Supreme Court on Friday to intervene after Texas was said to be effectively blocking federal access to parts of the Mexico border.
Officials claim that the Republican-led state was barring federal agents from doing their duties, stressing that new barriers recently erected by the state "reinforce" the need for intervention. In a statement, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said that Texas' new actions demonstrate measures to block the Border Patrol's ability to patrol or survey the border.
Migrant Crisis
Prelogar added that such actions have changed the situation on the ground, adding that the recent developments only work to reinforce the need for the Supreme Court to vacate the court of appeals' injunction as soon as possible.
The latest filing came shortly before 2:00 a.m. ET on Friday and underscores how urgent the federal government views the high court's intervention in the issue. The Justice Department last week asked the court to step in on an emergency basis to effectively throw a lower-court order that directed Border Patrol agents to stop removing concertina wire put in by Texas, as per CNN.
The filing also argues that the new barriers that Texas erected last week included not only more concertina wire along a part of the Rio Grande River but also "new fencing, located further inland than the original concertina wire," gates, and military Humvees, among others.
Prelogar noted that because Border Patrol was no longer able to access or view that particular stretch of the border, Texas has effectively prevented it from monitoring the region to determine whether or not a migrant requires the emergency aid that the court of appeals expressly excepted from the injunction.
The situation comes amid rising tension between the federal government and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott over the latter's increasingly aggressive border security efforts. The Justice Department claims that the Texas National Guard fenced off a 2.5-mile stretch near Eagle Pass and deployed armed soldiers and vehicles to block Border Patrol agents from accessing the Rio Grande.
Texas' Border Security Efforts
Texas soldiers were allegedly preventing Border Patrol agents from reaching a key staging area under an international bridge. They also supposedly blocked them from using a boat ramp in the public park, according to Express News.
The filing claimed that the National Guard said it would not allow federal agents to apprehend migrants in the area or allow state troopers to turn migrants over to federal agents for processing. The situation comes as the park was the center of Abbott's migrant crackdown last summer.
The Border Patrol has a legal responsibility under federal law to process migrants on U.S. soil and determine whether or not to detain them, transfer them to another agency, deport them, or release them into the country, pending a court hearing.
The situation comes as Eagle Pass Mayor Rolando Salinas said that the small city did not give Texas state officials permission to take over the area. He added that this was not something that they wanted to happen or asked for as a city, said CBS News.
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