Texas increases anger towards Biden in its border dispute and refuses to remove barbed wire International

“No one can pass through here now, Mr. President. We have resolved the problem. “You can take Border Patrol somewhere else.” These are the challenging words of Texas Gov. Dan Patrick, the number two in Shelby Park, a public park in Eagle Pass County that has been at the center of a dispute between local officials and the Joe Biden administration for days. The United States Supreme Court agreed with Washington on Monday and ordered the National Guard to remove barbed wire and allow federal agents to enter to strengthen border surveillance. Four days later, that still hasn’t happened and it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen any time soon.

Patrick, Lt. Gov. Patrick, of the Republican stronghold, said this Friday that if Border Patrol agents remove the wire, National Guard troops will re-establish the barrier overnight. Washington has sent heavy machinery to the area next to the Rio Grande to remove the concertina and has set this Friday as a deadline to get a response from Abbott.

The federal government on Tuesday asked Texas officials to allow Border Patrol agents to enter the park, where there has been a National Guard presence since Jan. 10. The Department of Homeland Security text indicated, “The State has permitted entry into Shelby Park only to visitors to the memorial, the press, and those visiting the nearby golf course, while banning entry to federal employees. Is.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton responded this afternoon, “The request has been denied.” In a letter to the General Counsel of Homeland Security, the official said the Border Patrol voluntarily withdrew from Shelby Park in 2023, which “intentionally reduced its ability to respond to medical emergencies” in the area.

Paxton assured that the location where the National Guard is stationed is Eagle Pass city property and not federal territory, so there is no reason to withdraw troops. Paxton says, “I respectfully suggest that the time spent suing Texas be spent strengthening existing immigration laws.”

President Biden has launched a challenge to the radical Republican wing. The President says he is ready to close the border with Mexico the day Congress approves the legislation that is being negotiated in the Senate. This would allow the executive to suspend crossings if the area becomes “saturated”. The agreement, which requires a Republican vote, would also provide the territory with 1,300 Border Patrol agents, 375 immigration judges, 1,600 asylum officers and 100 surveillance machines. However, Donald Trump has demanded that his party’s lawmakers not approve the agreement to prevent Biden from winning on the matter in an election year.

Governor Abbott, who was visiting India, had increased the tension just a few hours ago. From the program of Tucker Carlson, one of the journalistic beacons of the American radical right, he assured that he is “ready to continue building these barriers with wire or other objects.”

Abbott used the same tone in a harsh statement issued on Wednesday. “Instead of pursuing immigrants for federal crimes they committed by coming illegally, President Biden has sent his lawyers to court to sue Texas for taking action to secure the border,” the governor wrote. Abbott assured that more than six million people have entered the country illegally in the three years of the Biden administration. “This is more than the population of 33 states,” the president wrote, which claims without substantiation that the president has directed the federal government not to detain immigrants.

Texas officials have declared invasion and enacted laws in the local constitution so that the entity can “protect and defend itself.” “We will use every tool in our arsenal to protect Texas,” Abbott said this Friday. The Republican, one of the staunchest supporters of Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, points out that 10 other states have sent National Guard to the area to combat illegal crossings. According to the Fox network, 25 governors (all Republicans) support Abbott in a confrontation with Washington. One of them, Kristi Noem, from South Dakota, a region about 2,000 kilometers from the border, was in Eagle Pass this Friday.

Some Democratic voices have called on Biden to use his powers to make the Texas National Guard a federal force. There is precedent for this. One incident occurred in 1957, when President Dwight Eisenhower federalized Arkansas agents. This led to the desegregation of a school in Little Rock given the rising racial tensions. The state’s governor, Democrat Orval Faubus, had refused to take action so as not to make things more tense, but Washington intervened to enforce the law that indicated that blacks and whites could attend the same classes.

record of illegal crossing

Amid the duel between Texas and Washington, the Biden government has released the numbers of illegal crossings for December. Customs and Border Protection officials indicated that 302,034 encounters (arrests) were recorded at the border with Mexico. This is the largest figure recorded in a month in history.

According to preliminary data, the federal agency has assured that there has been a 50% reduction in illegal crossings so far in 2024. To discourage migrant flows, the Biden government has reactivated deportations of irregular immigrants. In the second half of 2023, approximately 472,000 people returned to their countries of origin. Of these, 78,000 were migrants who came as a family. “The majority of people detected at the southern border over the past three years have been deported, returned or expelled,” the government assures. The number of deportations registered in the last six months of 2023 exceeds the total annual repatriations since 2015.

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