“There is no one crossing here anymore, Mr. President.
We have solved the problem.
“You can take the Border Patrol somewhere else.”
These have been the challenging words of Dan Patrick, the number two in the Texas Government, in Shelby Park, a public park in Eagle Pass County that has been at the center of the dispute between local authorities and the Joe Biden Administration for days.
The United States Supreme Court on Monday agreed with Washington and ordered the National Guard to remove the barbed wire and allow federal agents to enter to reinforce border surveillance.
This hasn't happened four days later and it doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon.
Patrick, the lieutenant governor of the Republican stronghold, stated this Friday that if Border Patrol agents remove the wire, National Guard soldiers will put up the barrier again overnight.
Washington has sent heavy machinery to the area, which is next to the Rio Grande, to remove the concertina and set this Friday as the deadline to receive a response from Abbott.
The federal government asked Texas authorities on Tuesday to allow Border Patrol agents to enter the park, which has had a National Guard presence since January 10.
“The State has only allowed entry to Shelby Park to the public visiting a memorial, the press and people who go to the nearby golf course, while restricting the passage of federal employees,” indicated the text from the Department of Homeland Security.
Non-scalable fencing and razor wire, prepared by the Texas National Guard engineers to be set up, lays in Shelby Park at the US-Mexico border in Eagle Pass, Texas, US, January 16, 2024. REUTERS/Kaylee Greenlee BealKAYLEE GREENLEE BEAL (REUTERS)
“The request has been denied,” Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, responded this afternoon.
In a letter to the general counsel of Homeland Security, the official states that the Border Patrol voluntarily withdrew from Shelby Park in 2023, which “deliberately reduced its ability to respond to medical emergencies” in the area.
Paxton assures that the place where the National Guard is installed is property of the city of Eagle Pass and is not a federal zone, so there is no reason to withdraw the soldiers.
“I respectfully suggest that the time spent suing Texas be directed toward strengthening existing immigration laws,” Paxton says.
President Biden has launched a challenge to the hardline Republican wing.
The president says he is willing to close the border with Mexico the day Congress approves a law that is being negotiated in the Senate.
This would allow the Executive to suspend crossings when the area “becomes saturated.”
The agreement, which requires a Republican vote, would also provide the area with 1,300 Border Patrol agents, 375 immigration judges, 1,600 asylum officers and 100 surveillance machines.
Donald Trump, however, has demanded that legislators from his party not approve the pact to prevent Biden from winning on the matter in an election year.
Governor Abbott accompanied Donald Trump on a visit to the border last November.
MICHAEL GONZALEZ/POOL (via REUTERS)
Governor Abbott, who is on tour in India, had raised the tension hours before.
From Tucker Carlson's program, one of the journalistic beacons of the American hard right, he assured that he is prepared "to continue building these barriers, with wire or other objects."
Abbott used the same tone in a harsh statement released Wednesday.
“Instead of pursuing immigrants for the federal crimes they commit by arriving illegally, President Biden has sent his lawyers to court to sue Texas for taking actions to protect the border,” the governor wrote.
Abbott assures that more than six million people have entered the country illegally in three years of the Biden Administration.
“That is more than the population of 33 States,” wrote the president, who claims, without proving it, that the president has instructed the federal government not to detain migrants.
Texas authorities have declared an invasion and have invoked the laws in the local Constitution so that the entity “defends and protects itself.”
“We will use every tool in our arsenal to defend Texas,” Abbott said this Friday.
The Republican, one of the harshest supporters of Trump's anti-migrant policies, points out that 10 other states have sent national guards to the area to combat illegal crossings.
According to the Fox network, 25 governors (all Republicans) support Abbott in his confrontation with Washington.
One of them, Kristi Noem, from South Dakota, a region almost 2,000 kilometers from the border, was in Eagle Pass this Friday.
Some Democratic voices have called on Biden to use his powers to make the Texas National Guard a federal force.
There is precedent for this.
One occurred in 1957, when President Dwight Eisenhower made Arkansas agents federal.
This, in the face of growing racial tension that caused the desegregation of a school in Little Rock.
The state governor, Democrat Orval Faubus, had refused to act so as not to further strain things, but Washington intervened to enforce the law that indicated that blacks and whites could attend the same classrooms.
Record of illegal crossings
In the midst of the duel between Texas and Washington, the Biden Government has released the number of illegal crossings for December.
Customs and Border Protection authorities indicated that 302,034 encounters (arrests) were recorded on the border with Mexico.
It is the highest number recorded in a single month in history.
The federal agency assures that so far in 2024 there has been a 50% decrease in illegal crossings, according to preliminary figures.
To discourage the migratory flow, the Biden Government has reactivated the deportation of irregular immigrants.
In the second half of 2023, some 472,000 people were returned to their countries of origin.
Among these were 78,000 migrants who had crossed as a family.
“The majority of people found on the southern border in the last three years have been returned, returned or expelled,” the Government assures.
The number of deportations registered in the last six months of 2023 exceeds the annual total of repatriations since 2015.
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