Court favors US on border barrier
Ruling allows wire’s removal
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration Monday, allowing federal officials to cut or remove parts of a concertina wire barrier along the Mexican border that Texas erected to keep migrants from crossing into the state.
The ruling, by a 5-4 vote, was a victory for the administration in the increasingly bitter dispute between the White House and Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, an outspoken critic of President Biden’s border policy who has shipped busloads of migrants to northern cities.
Since 2021, Abbott, a thirdterm Republican, has mounted a multibillion-dollar campaign to impose stringent measures at the border to deter migrants. Those include erecting concertina wire along the banks of the Rio Grande, installing a barrier of buoys in the river, and enacting a sweeping law that allows state and local law enforcement to arrest migrants from Mexico.
In lifting an appeals court ruling that had generally prohibited the administration from removing the wire while the court considers the case, the justices gave no reasons, which is typical when they act on emergency applications. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s three liberal members to form a majority.
A spokesperson for Abbott, Andrew Mahaleris, defended Texas’ practices and vowed to keep pressing its case. “The absence of razor wire and other deterrence strategies encourages migrants to make unsafe and illegal crossings between ports of entry,” he said in a statement.
Lydia Guzmán, national immigration chair of the League of United Latin American Citizens, embraced the decision. “The Supreme Court ruling will help save lives at the U.S.-Mexico border if Gov. Abbott obeys the decision,” she said in a statement. “Further, the action by the justices allows Congress to work bipartisanly to address the broken immigration system.”
A three-judge panel of the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals last month limited the ability of federal border agents to cut the wire. The panel prohibited agents “from damaging, destroying or otherwise interfering with Texas’ c-wire fence” while the appeal is pending, but made an exception for medical emergencies that are likely to result in “serious bodily injury or death.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the administration in October, saying that Border Patrol agents had unlawfully destroyed state property and thwarted the state’s efforts to block migrants from crossing the border.
In the Biden administration’s emergency application, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar rejected the contention that federal officials had done anything improper.
The pressure to find a solution to the immigration crisis is intensifying.
Nine Democratic governors joined together to urge the Biden administration and congressional leaders to address what they call “a humanitarian crisis” created by the surge of migrants seeking refuge.
The governors, led by New York Governor Kathy Hochul and including Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, asked in a letter to the White House and Congress for “a serious commitment” to overhauling the immigration system that would include federal coordination on a strategy to relieve pressure on the southern and northern borders, as well as for more funds for states.