A group of red states came together to file a legal brief in support of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott amid his battle with the Biden administration over the razor wire deployed across a portion of the Rio Grande in order to keep illegal immigrants out.
Red States Hit Biden Admin With New Legal Brief Backing Texas’ Actions To Secure The Border https://t.co/3MBQdAs1Sz pic.twitter.com/dbcr2np9mg
— Daily Wire News (@DailyWireNews) February 27, 2024
Over 20 Republican attorneys general led by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach filed an amicus brief to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals expressing their support for Abbott’s efforts to keep the barrier in the river.
Pointing out that the Biden administration has failed in its responsibility of securing the border, the attorneys general argued that Texas has the right to defend itself.
Per The Daily Wire, the brief read in part, “The Constitution guarantees the States’ right to self-defense expressly and as a natural incident of the States’ status as sovereign entities. Here, however, the federal government has sought to disable Texas’s exercise of that right by claiming that it violates a federal law focused on the navigability of the nation’s waterways, a law that does not expressly limit the States’ ability to engage in self-defense.”
“The current administration has not only failed to secure the border, but also has willfully enacted policies that have encouraged illegal immigration. The result: millions of illegal aliens crossing the southern border and continuing into the interior. A flood of illegal immigration across the Southern border that has brought with it crime, human trafficking, and hundreds of thousands of fentanyl deaths to the people of this country. In both scope and effect, the wave of illegal migrants pouring across the border is like an invasion,” the brief read further.
In making the case that the court should let Texas keep the barrier in the river, the attorneys general pointed out that the Rivers and Harbors Act does not take away Texas’ right to defend itself.
The attorneys general who signed onto the brief included those from Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Iowa, Indiana, Georgia, North Dakota, Utah, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Idaho, Alaska, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Wyoming, Missouri and South Dakota.
The Biden administration sued Abbott over the barriers and it won as a federal judge made a decision that would have forced him to remove the barrier. Aboot in turn appealed the case and was granted a rehearing in January. The state can, however, keep the barrier for now while the Fifth Circuit makes a decision on the case.
