In its latest legal battle with Texas, the Biden administration is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to approve the removal of razor wire placed along the southern border between the Lone Star State and Mexico.
In a petition filed Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is pleading the Court to vacate an injunction that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit imposed in December that allowed Texas to keep its concertina-wire barriers along the Rio Grande. The appeals-court order bars U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents from removing the barriers unless in cases of medical emergencies, such as drowning or heat exposure.
“While Texas and the court of appeals believed a narrow exception permitting agents to cut the wire in case of extant medical emergencies would leave federal agents free to address life-threatening conditions, they ignored the uncontested evidence that it can take 10 to 30 minutes to cut through Texas’s dense layers of razor wire,” the court filing reads. “By the time a medical emergency is apparent, it may be too late to render life-saving aid.”
In addition to raising medical concerns, the petition argues that Border Patrol agents have the authority to access private land within 25 miles of the southern border and that state laws cannot prevent federal agents from carrying out their work.
“The court of appeals’ contrary ruling inverts the Supremacy Clause by requiring federal law to yield to Texas law,” the filing adds. “If accepted, the court’s rationale would leave the United States at the mercy of States that could seek to force the federal government to conform the implementation of federal immigration law to varying state-law regimes.”
The DHS is ultimately asking the Supreme Court to temporarily authorize the removal of Texas’s razor wire while the courts determine its legal validity.
The request comes after Texas attorney general Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration in October over the destruction of the state’s concertina wire, alleging federal agents assisted the illegal entry of thousands of immigrants. In response, the Biden administration has maintained that Border Patrol must apprehend illegal immigrants once they enter the U.S. and that the wire barrier prevents the agency from patrolling the border.
“The injunction prohibits agents from passing through or moving physical obstacles erected by the State that prevent access to the very border they are charged with patrolling and the individuals they are charged with apprehending and inspecting,” the petition states.
Texas governor Greg Abbott ordered the installation of concertina wire along the state’s border near the Rio Grande last summer, as part of Texas’s immigration countermeasure Operation Lone Star. In addition to the razor wire, the state’s sanctioned buoy barriers were also brought before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which ordered their removal last month.
Border Patrol sources revealed this week that over 302,000 illegal immigrants were documented attempting to cross the southern border in December — the highest record for any month. For comparison, there were approximately 242,000 illegal migrant encounters at the border in November.