Abbott escalating border dispute

On Jan. 10, under orders from Gov. Greg Abbott, the Texas National Guard and Department of Public Safety troopers took control of a public park in Eagle Pass and blocked U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents from entering.

By commandeering Shelby Park as part of his Operation Lone Star, Abbott has stopped federal Border Patrol agents from patrolling 2.5 miles of the U.s.-mexico border.

Two days later, three migrants — a woman and two children — drowned in the Rio Grande near that area. In first reporting the drowning on social media, U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar said “the state bears responsibility” because Texas soldiers wouldn’t allow federal agents to rescue the victims.

This turned out to be inaccurate, but it’s not substantively unfair. The Texas Military Department disputed the timeline of that account, and on Monday, they were proven right when a top Border Patrol official said that by the time they received a distress call from Mexico, the migrants had already drowned.

But the official also said that as two other migrants were seen struggling in the river, the Texas National Guard did not allow Border Patrol agents to help. The migrants were saved by a Mexican airboat. And perhaps federal agents, if they had been allowed to access the park to monitor the river, would have been prevented any drownings.

The problems at the border reflect a decades-long bipartisan failure under Democratic and Republican administrations. But Cuellar isn’t wrong in throwing some shade at Abbott and asserting the state bears some responsibility in this latest tragedy.

A consistent denial of humanity has been a hallmark of Abbott’s rhetoric and border policies.

The refusal of the National Guard to allow the Border Patrol on Friday to help the two migrants is consistent with last month’s video of guardsmen not responding to a woman holding a child while struggling in the Rio Grande and begging for help. The mother and child eventually made their way to land, but the indifference was stunning.

Last week’s revelations of Texas’ seizure of Shelby Park had barely registered before the drownings. But looming above all this is Abbott’s zealotry in escalating a border dispute between Texas and the federal government, including the right of Texas to erect concertina wire along the Rio Grande.

In a filing to the U.S. Supreme Court asking for intervention, the Department of Justice noted that on Jan. 10 new concertina wire barriers were being put up, with fencing, along the area of Shelby Park that restricted the Border Patrol’s ability to launch boats and respond quickly to emergencies.

On Monday, the Biden administration announced it was giving Texas until the end of Wednesday to allow the federal government full access to Shelby Park. In a blistering response letter released Wednesday evening, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced the state would continue to deny the federal government access in that stretch of Eagle Pass.

“Quite apart from the Shelby Park specifics, your demand letter rests on a more fundamental misunderstanding of federal law and the role of sovereign States within our constitutional order,” Paxton wrote.

Remember, Abbott took control of Shelby Park without consent of the city of Eagle Pass. Texas’ position appears to be the state has sovereignty from the federal government and control of municipal government.

The escalation with the Biden administration makes this dispute bigger than addressing a flawed immigration system.

The tension between states’ rights and federal authority in the United States is very much a part of the enumeration of powers in the Constitution. It’s a tension that fanned into the conflagration of the Civil War because of slavery.

During the Civil Rights Movement, there were three major crises in which Southern governors, refusing orders to desegregate schools, attempted to defy the federal government: Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., in 1957; the University of Mississippi in 1962; and the University of Alabama in 1963, when Gov. George Wallace stood in the doorway to stop the first Black students from registering.

All three crises ended with the National Guard taking control.

The issues at the Texas border are much different, but this dispute still comes down to state sovereignty versus federal authority. Paxton and Abbott may relish clashing with President Joe Biden, but are they willing to do this to the point that state and federal officers and soldiers are in opposition to one another at the border? The answer is clearly, and sadly, yes.

Texas seems to think it can defy the feds and quash local control