The President thought he had the courts in his back pocket. Now he’s been blindsided.
Because a Federal court ordered him to do the unthinkable.
A federal appeals court issued an injunction on Tuesday directing the Department of Homeland Security to cease cutting holes in Texas’ razor wire border barrier unless there is a medical emergency.
The decision is a huge triumph for Gov. Greg Abbott, who has led a major state effort to address the gaps in border security created by President Biden’s more permissive policy.
A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the federal government’s attempt to claim immunity from a lawsuit, saying that Texas had easily established its case that the Border Patrol was stomping on the state’s property by cutting the concertina wire.
“Defendants are enjoined during the pendency of this appeal from damaging, destroying or otherwise interfering with Texas’s c-wire fence in the vicinity of Eagle Pass, Texas,” Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan said in the court’s opinion.
The injunction will remain in effect while the lawsuit is heard and decided in court.
Texas has installed 110 miles of razor wire along the Rio Grande’s banks to fortify its border against the unprecedented influx of illegal immigrants.
The state filed a lawsuit when Border Patrol agents began cutting the wire.
Texas installed razor wire in Eagle Pass to stop illegal crossings.
Today the Biden Admin CUT that wire, opening the floodgates to illegal immigrants.
I immediately deployed more Texas National Guard to repel illegal crossings & install more razor wire. pic.twitter.com/eMtLS8Z6WI
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) September 20, 2023
Last month, a lower court ruled against the state, saying that the federal government had sovereign immunity in the case.
Nonetheless, Judge Alia Moses scolded the federal government, saying it was improper to argue that it needed to break the wire in order to carry out its job of apprehending and detaining migrants.
Judge Moses, nominated by President George W. Bush, sifted over the evidence in the case and stated that she discovered at least 14 episodes of wire cutting, many of which were not emergencies.
On Sept. 20, agents cut fresh holes in concertina wire despite the fact that there was already a hole 15 feet away.
Agents also dropped a climbing rope to assist illegal immigrants in scaling the Rio Grande’s banks.
A Border Patrol boat sat in the river, observing the people but never attempting to stop, question, or detain them.
Instead, once the migrants arrived in the United States, officials allowed them walk a mile inland without monitoring in the hope that they would head to a Border Patrol processing location to be legally apprehended and processed.
“The court found no alien was ‘inspected’ at all. Moreover, if agents intended to inspect, they could have done so without doing anything to the wire,” Judge Duncan wrote in Tuesday’s appeals court opinion.
In his perspective, he supplied photographs of migrants wading across the river and flowing in through a gap in the barbed wire fence.
Stay tuned to The Federalist Wire.
