Texas wants to exercise “complete control” over the border across a stretch of the Rio Grande and block federal access even during emergencies, the Biden administration told the Supreme Court. In a Monday filing, the federal government cited the state’s recent interference to bolster its request that the justices lift a lower-court injunction that bars federal agents from cutting or moving the state’s concertina wire coils when necessary to access the border or migrants.
Citing a federal agent’s sworn declaration, the government recounted an incident last week in which Mexican officials told U.S. Border Patrol that there were two migrants in distress on the U.S. side of the river and that three migrants had drowned in that area. But the Texas National Guard wouldn’t let Border Patrol enter, according to the federal government. The next day, Mexican officials told Border Patrol that the two migrants had attempted to return to Mexico and were rescued by the Mexican government while suffering from hypothermia and that the Mexican government recovered the bodies of the three drowned migrants and rescued two additional migrants who attempted to cross that night. The Texas Military Department has disputed the account.
“It is impossible to say what might have happened if Border Patrol had had its former access to the area — including through its surveillance trucks that assisted in monitoring the area,” U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote to the high court. She added: “At the very least, however, Border Patrol would have had the opportunity to take any available steps to fulfill its responsibilities and assist its counterparts in the Mexican government with undertaking the rescue mission. Texas made that impossible.”
The state’s latest actions “vividly illustrate the untenable legal and practical implications of that injunction,” Prelogar wrote. Depending on how the high court responds, we’ll learn whether the justices care.
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