Ordinary citizens are no longer welcome at Shelby Park, a sprawling green in Eagle Pass, Texas, overlooking the Rio Grande and Mexico. The Texas National Guard has surrounded it with fences and barbed wire. But the Republican governors of thirteen US states were there on Sunday. They supported fellow Texan Greg Abbott and came up with a sensational second ban: Federal Border Police officers are also barred from entering the park.
According to the Biden administration, Abbott undermines a fundamental tenet of the US Constitution: federal laws always take precedence over a state's laws. And it is the central government that makes and enforces the rules for immigration and asylum.
Buses to the North
According to Abbott, the latter is precisely the problem. According to him, the central government has lost all control over the flow of migrants. Last December, more than 300,000 entered the country. Many applied for asylum and were allowed to enter the country within a few years with subpoenas for court hearings.
The bordering states consider all these newcomers a burden. Texas will begin sending teams on buses to northern cities such as New York, Chicago and Washington DC in 2022. Democratic administrations soon sounded the alarm there, too. Meanwhile, not only a majority of Republican voters, but half of Democratic voters believe that tougher policy should be introduced.
Texas no longer wants to wait for Washington. For years now, members of its National Guard have arrested migrants and turned them over to border police. And a new law, due to come into effect in March, would make crossing the border illegally punishable by a maximum of six months in prison. Local judges can order undocumented immigrants to leave the country. Those who fail to do so or return face up to 22 years in prison.
Razor wire
Prevention is better than punishment, Texas reasons. Beginning at Shelby Park, many migrants crossed the Rio Grande until recently. A barrier was built along the bank with razor wire. Even the border police, who have received the migrants there so far, are not allowed to leave the shore. When the authorities cut down the barbed wire, Texas went to a local judge, who barred the authorities from doing so. According to the Border Police, this may have led to the three migrants drowning in the river, so they did not help in time.
The case surrounding the ribbon-cutting reached the Supreme Court, which ruled last month in favor of the Biden administration in an emergency proceeding, in an otherwise undisclosed 5-4 decision. So Texas shouldn't ban cutting the wire. But no one has yet banned Texas from laying new razor wire, and the state is doing it again and again. A separate case is ongoing over whether to grant permission to central government agents.
Governor Abbott of Texas is shy of plunging the country into a constitutional crisis, writes constitutional expert Stephen Vladek. The New York Times. Above all, he adheres to the letter of the statement. But he found it shocking that four of the five members of the Supreme Court did not take federal supremacy for granted. Abbott is being encouraged by Republican members of Congress to simply ignore the ruling.
theory
Abbott believes he is upholding the Constitution. The first article states that the states may defend themselves against invasion without the consent of Congress. According to Abbott, this does not necessarily involve engaging an enemy force. And, last Wednesday, the governor wrote in a statement, “The federal government has broken the contract between the United States and the states.”
This sounds similar to the complaint from southern states in the nineteenth century when their right to enslave people was threatened. So they felt they could secede, which led to the American Civil War.
Since then, it has been a tenet of American law that states can never secede from the Union. But there's still a movement in Texas that thinks otherwise. “If Texas really wants to protect its border, the only way to do it is as an independent, self-governing state,” said its president, Daniel Miller.
Trump is turning Republicans against their preferred tough border policies
Republicans in Congress in Washington are demanding that America's asylum policy be as tight as they can get. Late last year, they blocked aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan to implement tougher immigration policies. On Sunday evening, a group of Senate Republicans and Democrats introduced a bill that would consolidate all four issues. President Biden welcomed the deal. Republicans themselves, meanwhile, appear to be doing a U-turn.
The plan includes tightening requirements for seeking asylum in the United States. In the meantime, as legal residency is required, requests for this do not take years to process. If more than four thousand people cross the border a day without permission, the President can 'close' the border and send them back mercilessly. He must gather more than five thousand.
Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee in November's presidential election, has rejected the plan. In the House of Representatives, which must approve the bill, Speaker Mike Johnson does not want to bring it up for a vote. Trump was elected in 2016 and, among other things, he railed against the entry of immigrants, often criminals and rapists. The deal takes that issue off his hands for the rest of this election year.
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