Texas Sending State Troops To Border Despite Biden’s Objections

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

EAGLE PASS, USA (Worthy News) – Migrants trying to enter the United States illegally from Mexico were seeing more obstacles Monday as Texas prepared to house up to 2,300 state troops in its border city of Eagle Pass, raising tensions with the Biden administration.

The 80-acre base camp along the Rio Grande river will open near Shelby Park, the riverfront area where Texas National Guard members installed miles (kilometers) of razor wire and began denying access to U.S. Border Patrol agents, Worthy News learned.

It will include a 700-seat dining facility, a gym, a laundry, and medical services while saving on hotel costs for the deployment, according to sources familiar with the plan.

The camp was due to allow for additional U.S. states to send troops to help Texas patrol the border as part of a growing rift between Republican governors and the federal government over border enforcement.

“This will increase the ability for a larger number of Texas military department personnel in Eagle Pass to operate more effectively and more efficiently,” said Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican.

However, the Biden administration opposes the move, and Texas is forced to defend these initiatives in court.

Yet, Republican governors of 25 states signed a statement pledging to stand alongside Texas in its confrontation with the federal government, which they say hasn’t done enough to enforce existing laws.

FEDERAL JUDGE

A federal judge in Austin heard three hours of arguments last Thursday over whether to halt the implementation of a new Texas law set to go into effect on March 5. It would allow state and local police officers to directly arrest “unauthorized” migrants as a prelude to removing them from the country.

U.S. President Joe Biden says the law violates federal law and the U.S. Constitution, which gives the federal government authority over immigration matters.

Texas counters that its state law mirrors federal legislation in most respects but represents a necessary further deterrent to illegal migration.

The federal government is also challenging the state’s placement of a 1,000-foot barrier in the middle of the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass.

Lawyers for the federal government said that the large orange buoys “violated a federal law” over navigable rivers.

Late last year, a federal appeals court sided with the Biden administration, ordering Texas to remove the barrier from the river while the case moved forward. A larger panel of judges then reversed the order.

A separate case making its way through the court system involves U.S. Border Patrol agents’ attempts to cut or remove concertina wire installed by the Texas authorities on the banks of the Rio Grande.

CUT WIRE

The federal government claims Border Patrol agents need to cut wire to assist migrants who may find themselves in peril trying to cross the river.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit last year claiming that the agents had destroyed state property by removing portions of the wire.

That legal fight reached the Supreme Court last month, where justices ruled that border agents were permitted to cut or remove the wire as long as the case was being prosecuted at the lower court.

Critics say Abbott’s announcement over the weekend on a new base camp comes while the number of migrants entering Texas from Mexico has dropped by 50 percent in the past month.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it had encountered migrants between ports of entry 124,220 times in January, down from more than 249,000 the previous month.

In Eagle Pass, a city that has come to symbolize the immigration crisis conflicts between the state and federal governments, the numbers have plummeted from 6,000 in a single day to a handful a day.

But Abbott said on Friday that he expected crossings to rise again this spring. The guards at the base are “going to have the ability to more quickly be able to construct that razor wire barrier,” he stressed, despite fears of a potential standoff with the U.S. military and warnings of civil war.

Record numbers of migrants have crossed illegally into the U.S. since Biden took office in 2021, including several million crossing into Texas.

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