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Notes -
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.
The US feds seem to be backing down, apparently they're not going to clear away the barbed wire. Is this a tactical retreat or an operational pause?
On the one hand, they might try again in a couple of weeks when everyone has forgotten and the media's moved on. Or they could use other methods to facilitate illegal immigration that divert around barbed wire.
Alternately, it is a bad look in an election year, it might make sense to slow down now. As far as demographics are concerned, time is on their side - well over half of Under-15s are non-white and that number is still rising. Reducing inflow doesn't matter so much, as long as Republicans aren't able to execute a huge expulsion and re-emigration operation, Democrats/Progressives will enjoy permanent electoral/demographic dominance. In terms of voting, the key thing is race - whites tend to vote Republican, non-whites hugely favour Democrats. This is a perfectly rational strategic decision, Dems favour the expansion of social welfare, redistribution, multiculturalism and affirmative action, which usually favour non-whites over whites. Either the Republicans will move to join them, or they'll become irrelevant.
Biden needs feds he can trust, and CBP (based on that union letter) isn't it. He'll probably send another group.
Other than assuming command of the national guard, what other federal entity would have a statutory mandate in this circumstance?
I know the obvious retort is "it doesn't matter and he'll just invent a legal fig leaf", but I'm interested in what existing options might exist that don't require novel legal theories.
He could send US Marshalls, to enforce the Supreme Court order. He could federalize and send any state national guard (not necessarily Texas's) in under 10 U.S. Code § 12406(3) (execute the laws of the United States), or more aggressively 10 U.S. Code § 12406(2) (rebellion or danger of rebellion). He could use the literal Army under 10 USC 332 (unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States). There's really no barrier here. I expect he could probably use the DEA or FBI or ATF on some pretext too.
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