It’s like clockwork. This is how we do the dance. Texas Governor Abbott gets legislation passed or signs an executive order to do something to secure the Texas-Mexico border and the Biden administration sues to undo his actions. Back and forth, usually until the Supreme Court rules.
Team Biden is hellbent to keep the southern border wide open. Do not be fooled by anything the lying liars in the Biden administration say – the open border is intentional. We have a Democrat president who deliberately reversed what was working in the previous administration. His top responsibility as president is to protect the homeland. Biden has abandoned Americans in hopes of letting in future Democrat voters. Already the call for blanket amnesty has been discussed – first in the legislation Biden touts as first day legislation on immigration and Wednesday during Secretary Blinken’s fruitless talks with the Mexican president in Mexico City.
DOJ is now threatening a lawsuit against Governor Abbott and Texas if the state moves forward with a new law that empowers state officials to remove people from the U.S. who are suspected of being in the country illegally.
The new legislation, which Abbott signed into law earlier this month, is unconstitutional and will disrupt the federal government’s immigration enforcement operations, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton wrote in a letter to the governor obtained by Hearst Newspapers.
The letter says that if Abbott does not confirm the state will forgo enforcement of the law by Jan. 3, “the United States will pursue all appropriate legal remedies to ensure that Texas does not interfere with the functions of the federal government.”
The law doesn’t go into effect until March. It empowers judges to order their removal. Democrats see this as a major escalation of Abbott’s border security initiative, Operation Lone Star. This was put into effect in March 2021 when the governor decided to act in order to push back on Biden’s open border. Texas Republicans and Abbott see the legislation as a invitation as an opportunity for the Supreme Court to revisit leaving immigration enforcement solely to the federal government.
There are already lawsuits to stop the legislation from going into effect. El Paso County and two immigrant rights groups are suing what they call “patently illegal” legislation. The ACLU is representing them in the case.
As usual, the Mexican government will not cooperate in accepting illegal immigrants ordered removed by state officials. Mexican officials have already said they will not go along with the law. They threaten to take action to stop it.
This is the situation Texas is in. Texas fights alone. The federal government and the Mexican government are not cooperative. They don’t have a problem with the open border. As the 2024 presidential election grows closer, look for Team Biden to make more meaningless gestures, like the trip to Mexico City this week, in order to make it look like they are doing something to ease the disastrous humanitarian crisis and the national security crisis on the border. It’s all optics. It’s all talk.
In the meantime, Governor Abbott promises to take it to the Supreme Court. Abbott is a former Texas attorney general. He said he believes the law was crafted in a way that “can and should be upheld in the courts on its own.”
The DOJ letter says the U.S. Constitution tasks the federal government with regulating immigration and controlling the international borders. The law “therefore intrudes into a field that is occupied by the federal government and is preempted,” the letter says.
The Justice Department points to a landmark Supreme Court ruling from 2012 that held that only the federal government has the power to enforce immigration laws. Abbott has cast the law as an opening for the high court to reconsider that ruling.
In that case, the high court struck down portions of an Arizona law that authorized police to arrest anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. Then-Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that the federal government has “broad discretion” in setting immigration policy and that the state could not pursue policies that “undermine federal law.”
“Indeed, the Supreme Court has confirmed that ‘the removal process’ must be ‘entrusted to the discretion of the Federal Government’ because a ‘decision on removability’ touches ‘on foreign relations and must be made with one voice,’” the letter says.
Kennedy is no longer on the Supreme Court. The Court leans conservative now, which it did not do in 2012. Perhaps the current bench will be more accommodating to states’ rights. How can it be that a state does not have the right to protect its border, especially a state that shares a border with another country?
NEW: Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector (Eagle Pass), reports apprehending over 22,000 illegal immigrants in just a one week span from 12/17 – 12/23. Massive numbers for just one of nine sectors on the southern border, as mass catch & release continues on the largest scale ever seen.
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) December 28, 2023