Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R-TX.) is suing the Biden Administration over its efforts to cut razor wire set up by the state at the southern border to prevent illegal migrants from entering the U.S.
This week, Paxton announced a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection after officials dismantled barriers along the Texas-Mexico border.
More from the lawsuit:
By cutting Texas’s concertina wire, the federal government has not only illegally destroyed property owned by the State of Texas; it has also disrupted the State’s border security efforts, leaving gaps in Texas’s border barriers and damaging Texas’s ability to effectively deter illegal entry into its territory. Texas brings this lawsuit to end this ongoing, unlawful practice which undermines its border security efforts. This Court can and should enjoin the federal defendants from continuing to destroy and damage private property that is not theirs—without statutory authority and in violation of both state and federal law.
Earlier this year, Texas installed razor wire fencing in the heavily trafficked Eagle Pass border crossing area in an effort to deter illegal aliens from coming into the states.
This is one of the many actions Texas has taken to keep illegal migrants out of the U.S., including building its own border wall and installing a buoy barrier in the Rio Grande.
Recently, Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX.) posted a video showing border agents cutting a hole in the border wall to allow illegal aliens to pass through.
Border Patrol agents argued that the illegal migrants were already on U.S. soil, so therefore, they were “obligated” to allow them to enter the country.
The lawsuit adds:
As a result of Defendants’ destruction of concertina wire, Plaintiff has suffered and continues to suffer harm and a real and immediate threat of repeated injury in the future. Plaintiff owns the concertina wire that has been placed in border locations, and Defendants’ repeated destruction of Plaintiff’s property has diminished Texas’s efforts to secure the border, increasing its costs for providing healthcare, public education, incarceration, and driver’s licenses. That two-week surge in Eagle Pass is roughly the same as the total number of alien apprehensions for the entire Del Rio Sector for the entire year in each of 2009, 2010, 2011, 2017, and 2018.
Paxton argued that Texas has the right to secure its border with Mexico, saying that President Joe Biden has put millions of American lives at risk with his open border policies. He added that “Biden’s free-for-all will make this crushing immigration crisis drastically worse.”