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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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There is a happening currently happening along the Texas/Mexico border which seems to be escalating in an interesting way.

  • The state of Texas has been taking measures to secure their border with Mexico. These measures include installing concertina wire (colloquially known as "razor wire") along the border.

  • A supreme court ruling said that US Border Patrol (the feds) are allowed to go into Texas against Texas's wishes and cut this wire. As /u/slowboy points out below, it is a bit more nuanced than that. There was an injunction preventing CBP from going to cut the wires, and the Supreme Court overruled it. Interesting culture war fodder: Amy Coney Barrett sided with the majority on this.

  • Yesterday, Greg Abbot signaled that he did not have any intention of complying with this.

  • Today, President Biden said that Texas has until tomorrow (Friday) to let them in. (Sorry for the low quality link here. If somebody has a better one please share it).

This does seem to be escalating rapidly. I don't see where the offramps are other than Abbot backing down. If he doesn't, what does that mean? Texas National Guard vs the Federal Government sounds awfully close to...I hate saying this, but a civil war? That's not right though since I can't imagine them shooting at each other.

This is also confusing to me politically. The border situation is not a political win for Biden. Even among liberals the cracks are starting to show. Morning Joe (msnbc show) this morning was talking about how there is a border crisis and it's the republicans causing all this illegal immigration by not doing a "Comprehensive Immigration Policy". That's obviously absurd, but it does show that liberals are willing to agree that completely open borders are suboptimal.

Edit: Trump weighs in

This, to my stupid non-lawyer brain, seems way more like an "incitement to insurrection" than anything he said on January 6th. Interesting.

How can Texas physically prevent the border patrol from entering Texas? Texas doesn't have border control between it and other states, and wouldn't part of the border patrol already be in Texas anyway?

See the link I posted right above your comment; Texas seized a park that they're excluding the border patrol from access to.

How are they excluding the border patrol from it? What happens when Biden says "go in anyway"?

I suspect there would be no practical way to actually stop border patrol without the use of force, and once you cross that line you're in "I may have committed some light treason" territory.

How are they excluding the border patrol from it?

From a legal perspective, Shelby Park is owned by Texas or the town of Eagle's Pass. From a practical sense, they put up fences and parked some state humvees on state or town-owned roads.

I expect the answer is Biden says go in anyway is that Texas flinches and adds trespassing to their lawsuit, but I wouldn't want to bet a whole lot of money on that, or how it would go if it happens.

adds trespassing to their lawsuit

That's an interesting question: How would this play out if the land in question were private? Can I hang a "no federal agents allowed without a warrant" sign by my door? Even if I had a business open to the general public? Can the state apply such a sign to state land? I don't see a compelling reason why they couldn't. Is there a warrant in this case? Or an existing easement?

If nothing else, there's at least a fair amount of jurisprudence, ironically in the name of "sanctuary cities", that suggests that the Feds cannot compel the state to work with them. Which is, at least, an entertaining academic argument. Although I'm admittedly not particularly aware of the specifics in this case.

No, within such and such distance of the border the CBP doesn't need a warrant to enter private property.