The Lone Star State's standoff with the feds is going strong as Texas National Guard and state troopers keep beefing up barriers at Shelby Park, a known border crossing point, despite a recent Supreme Court ruling. According to a report by Military Times and KSAT, the high court's 5-4 decision vacated an earlier ruling that had barred Border Patrol from cutting through the state's concertina wire, intended to block migrants from crossing the Rio Grande into the park.
This legal scuffle comes amid rising tensions, Texas Governor Greg Abbott doubled down on his stance, fiercely defending his right to enforce border security and accusing President Biden of neglecting to enforce immigration laws, as he reported in a statement without giving any solid proof. The Department of Homeland Security has fired back, with a letter from its general counsel, Jonathan Meyer, insisting on unfettered access to the park for immigration officers, a demand that seems to have fallen on deaf ears in Texas where state officials are turning a blind eye to federal demands and recently obstructed Border Patrol agents from accessing the site during a border crossing emergency wherein migrants were in distress in the river's waters.
Indications of Texas' quiet rebellion were made public when according to MSN, Air Force Maj. Gen. Thomas Suelzer, head of the Texas Military Department, told staff that the Supreme Court's ruling only applied to the retrieval of stranded migrants; he affirmed that his soldiers would fix any barriers federal agents knock down and barred federal setup of migrant processing facilities in the contested areas.
Amid the legal turmoil, officials paint contrasting pictures with Texas claiming the Biden administration is instructing federal agents to cut through state property to assist in what they define as "illegal crossings," counts that are pitted against administration's claims that Texas' moves are political theater that only hampers Border Patrol operations. The court's lean did not go down unanimously, Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas dissented but their views did not carry the day as Chief Justice John Roberts along with Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor sided with the administration, in the latest chapter of an ongoing legal saga.
