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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.
At some point federal agents could arrest state national guardsmen. If they're afraid of forceful resistance, just send the arrest warrants to the guardsmen's home addresses. They can be physically handcuffed after the "crisis" is over. I doubt many people are willing to risk their freedom to defend Abbot's showmanship.
Alternatively...Biden could enforce the border. I know it sounds crazy, but at this point its a political win for him to work with Abbot.
Yeah on an object level it's insane that Biden is fighting to remove barriers to illegal immigration.
I recently read a Todd Bensman post that dropped the last puzzle piece in place. The Biden administration's illegal immigration policy (or lack thereof) just spent November and December in the spotlight, with even traditionally sympathetic media outlets raising eyebrows at the magnitude of border crossings and highlighting uncomfortable results in opinion polls. A handful of diplomatic meetings between the US and Mexico took place in late December, and in the opening weeks of January the Mexican government suddenly found an urgent need to shut down La Bestia, a train route traveling from Guatemala to the US border (technically with a "layover" in a Mexico City freight yard), and the primary corridor of illegal immigration from Central America for the entire Biden administration. Migrants are now being bussed to Villahermosa with increasing frequency and urgency, hot on the heels of the US diplomatic visit. Longitudinal flights from Piedras Negras (across the border from Eagle Pass) restarted concurrent to the diplomatic meeting (PDF, see last two pages - by migrant advocacy group Witness to the Border, so it's only an estimate, but probably close to accurate, especially for obvious signals like restarting known longitudinal flights). The Matamoros/Brownsville migrant camps were bulldozed at the end of December. There's a lot more actions taken in the last few weeks, but the upshot is that border crossings are way down, shantytowns aren't on nightly TV any more, and record-setting border crossings are momentarily a thing of the past.
I saw threads for the last two weeks wondering about Abbott's possible motivations. I believe comments like this illustrate the reason. The Biden administration is taking measurable steps to halt the flow of illegal immigrants (up to you if it's a genuine change of heart or just cynical ratings management), and the results have been observable. By picking a fight with the federal government now, Abbott shifts the frame from "the Biden administration is making measurable progress reducing illegal immigration" to "the Biden administration is fighting to make illegal immigration easier," which at a soundbyte level is a win for Abbott. Any subsequent moves the Biden administration makes to reign him in just turn into more headlines for Abbott, adding up to a serious perception problem at election day against Donald "Build The Wall" Trump. Consequently, the Biden administration wants to avoid escalation, and now they have a ruling in-hand that undermines any object-level obstruction by Texas without actually compelling Texas to do anything different.
But then why was Biden even fighting in the first place? Don’t litigate currently. If Abbot was just trying to set up what you believe is a political stunt to make it clear Biden is pro illegal immigration, then didn’t Biden fall right into it?
Earlier I implied that the administration wants to create a narrative about progress, but the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that they just want the numbers to go down and have everyone forget about the border and illegal immigration for a while. They don't get credit from the left or the right for reducing illegal immigration numbers: the left complains about denying the poor, impoverished families of their American Dream; the right assumes any attempt by the Biden administration to reign in illegal immigration is bad faith optics manipulation. I think at this point they're trying to stop the bleeding. I wouldn't say Biden "fell into" some political trap, so much as the administration got spooked into action by numbers and headlines they couldn't ignore, and Republicans see that kind of panic as a glowing red weak point.
Now the administration is under attack from a bad angle, and they have to respond or risk losing control of the narrative. If they had no response, this comes off as a tacit admission that the administration's border security policy has failed. As previously mentioned, over-reacting is also dangerous, since it hands the enemy obvious ammunition: "Why is Biden fighting so hard to let illegal immigrants in?" Getting a judicial ruling that explicitly negates Abbott's directives casts Abbott as a lawbreaker, and emphasizing medical emergencies portrays him as cruel, all without compelling Abbott to do anything. It plays well with the base, if conversations with friends are any indicator... prevailing left-wing opinion of Abbott can be roughly summarized as "crooked, deranged lawfare man," and pulling out "the judge said you're obviously wrong and bad" fuels plenty of sneering. Out of a handful of bad options, I think this is probably the best one.
There's also the optics of corpses piling up on the shores of a headline-news border crossing to consider. I'm sure the rank and file have enough genuine empathy in them to be alarmed and upset when Texas declares they have no obligation to rescue the injured or the dying, but this is still a pretty abstract concept - it's easy to say "people will die" without fully internalizing it. Compare with news crews finding piles of bodies and asking why Joe Biden lets Texas get away with it. That's the start of an uncomfortable conversation, and it keeps the border in the news. Now CBP has cover to keep cutting through Texas obstructions and keep the body count low.
Of course they can. Slow and steady wins the race. The pace has been too rapid last couple years, cities can't cope with it, you've had schools closed to assimilate new blacks and browns.
Electing a new people can't be a too hasty affair. One needs to be patient so there's less possibility of a back clash. You need to pass hate speech laws criminalising opposition to it. Just opening the border and letting in tens of millions like in the infamous book, nah. Cinematic, but really, it's more of a decades long project.
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