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The Texas border has been chaos since President Joe Biden took office. His policies unleashed unprecedented waves of migration into the U.S., and the surge isn’t slowing down. In one single day in mid-December, there were 12,600 Border Patrol encounters with migrants trying to enter illegally, a record number. This is too many for law enforcement officials to process.
As a deterrent, Gov. Greg Abbott has deployed more people than ever before to manage security and migrant flow, he’s signed a law that allows law enforcement to arrest migrants crossing illegally, and he’s placed physical barriers, like concertina wire, to encourage migrants to enter only at legal ports of entry.
On Monday, in a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court released a temporary order that clears the way for the Border Patrol to cut the wires standing between Texas and Mexico.
So far, Texas officials aren’t happy about this decision. In a written statement, Abbott said that Texas has a constitutional right to self-defense thanks to the Founding Fathers’ vision that the “states should not be left to the mercy of a lawless president.”
Abbott continues: “For these reasons, I have already declared an invasion under the U.S. Constitution to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself. That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary. The Texas National Guard, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and other Texas personnel are acting on that authority, as well as state law, to secure the Texas border.”
The Guard has also resumed putting additional concertina wire across the border.
