‘The Fight is Not Over’: Texas Won’t Give Up on Securing Its Borders After SCOTUS Ruling

Ben Kew reporting for RedState 

The state of Texas will not give up on its efforts to secure its borders after the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had the right to intervene. 

In a ruling on Tuesday, the Supreme Court decided by a 5-4 majority that federal officials had the right to remove physical barriers erected by the Texas National Guard. 

Two supposedly conservative judges, Justices John Roberts and Amy Coney Barett, sided with the Biden administration, while Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch dissented. 

The decision vacated a previous injunction from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that prevented federal agents from cutting the wire. 

However, the Texas Tribune reports that both Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton will refuse to back down over the issue and will carry on fighting to secure the southern border from the waves of illegal immigration.

“The Biden Administration has repeatedly cut wire that Texas installed to stop illegal crossings, opening the floodgates to illegal immigrants,” Andrew Mahaleris, a spokesperson for Abbott told the Tribune.

“The absence of razor wire and other deterrence strategies encourages migrants to make unsafe and illegal crossings between ports of entry, while making the job of Texas National Guard soldiers and DPS troopers more dangerous and difficult," the spokesperson added. “This case is ongoing, and Governor Abbott will continue fighting to defend Texas' property and its constitutional authority to secure the border.”

Meanwhile, Paxton similarly warned that the “fight is not over” against the Biden administration’s unwillingness to stop the millions of people illegally entering the country each year.

“The Supreme Court’s temporary order allows Biden to continue his illegal effort to aid the foreign invasion of America,” Paxton said in a statement. “The destruction of Texas’ border barriers will not help enforce the law or keep American citizens safe. This fight is not over, and I look forward to defending our state’s sovereignty.”

The legal battle began last September when Abbott declared a state of emergency over the ongoing illegal immigration crisis, which allowed the mobilization of the Texas National Guard to help secure the border. 

This was done through the putting up of miles of concertina wire as well as the placement of buoys in the Rio Grande as barriers. 

After Border Patrol agents responded by tearing down parts of a wire barrier, Texas sued the Department of Homeland Security, arguing that they had vandalized state property and interfered with their efforts to enforce the law. 

“By cutting Texas’s concertina wire, the federal government has not only illegally destroyed property owned by the State of Texas; it has also disrupted the State’s border security efforts, leaving gaps in Texas’s border barriers and damaging Texas’s ability to effectively deter illegal entry into its territory,” the complaint stated at the time.

Last September, The New York Post reported that a staggering 3.8 million illegal immigrants were admitted into the U.S. since Joe Biden took office in January 2021. Nearly half of those entrants have done so without detection and have yet to be apprehended.