EAGLE PASS, Texas — As of Wednesday afternoon, Army National Guard soldiers remain posted at temporary gates erected at the entrance to a city-owned park along the Rio Grande. The park was seized by order of Texas Governor Greg Abbott and closed off to Border Patrol agents unless their entrance into the area is first coordinated with state law enforcement and the Texas Military Department.
The state appears to be standing firm as a Biden administration deadline of “the end of the day” for the state to remove the gates and allow unimpeded access to the Border Patrol approaches. General Counsel Jonathan Meyer, on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security, communicated it to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a letter on January 10.
As reported by Breitbart Texas, the DHS letter to Paxton was sent in response to the seizure of Shelby Park a few days earlier under a Texas statute for law enforcement and disaster relief purposes by Abbott in response to the border crisis impacting his state. The DHS letter to Paxton cited the statutory authority granted to Border Patrol agents to patrol private lands within 25 miles of the border without a warrant. The letter warned the state was impeding the federal agents with the seizure of the property and the conditions placed upon the Border Patrol for entry.
In addition, the DHS letter asserts the placement of the temporary gates at the entrance of the park, put in place by state authorities, is on federal land. The federal government acquired the land in question after an intense legal battle with the City of Eagle Pass over the right to erect a border fence as required by the Secure Fence Act of 2006.
Detailed in the letter sent to Paxton by DHS Counsel was the drowning of three migrant family members, a mother and two minor children, who perished in the Rio Grande waters a day after the seizure of the park. Although the letter does not specifically blame the state for the drownings, the DHS general counsel alleges the state precluded the Border Patrol from entering the park to perform rescue duties related to the incident on January 12, saying, “Texas has demonstrated that even in the most exigent circumstances, it will not allow Border Patrol access to the border to conduct law enforcement and emergency response activities.”
In response to the demands made by the Department of Homeland Security in Counsel Meyer’s demand to grant unimpeded access to the Border Patrol, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton responded in a letter on Wednesday. In his response to DHS, Paxton disputed the arguments made in their cease and desist letter, saying:
Texas allows prompt entry into Shelby Park by any U.S. Border Patrol personnel responding to a medical emergency, and this access is not “limited to use of the boat ramp,” as you say. TMD has ordered its Guardsmen not to impede lifesaving care for aliens who illegally cross the Rio Grande. To that end, TMD has erected gates that allow for rapid admission when federal personnel communicate the existence of some medical exigency.
Paxton went on to say:
President Biden has been warned in a series of letters, one of them hand-delivered to him in El Paso, that his sustained dereliction of duty in securing the border is illegal. By instructing your agency and others to ignore federal immigration laws, he has breached the guarantee, found in Article IV, § 4 of the U.S. Constitution, that the federal government “shall protect each of [the States] against Invasion.”
The battle over control of the park now finds the City of Eagle Pass, who opposes the state seizure of Shelby Park, and the federal government on the same side of the issue. When the Secure Fence Act was passed in 2006, the city battled with the federal government over the construction of the border fencing, which would ultimately leave Shelby Park inside the border fence and walled off from the city.
Then-President George W. Bush signed the 2006 bipartisan fence bill after passage with the support of 80 senators, including then-senate and future presidents Joseph Biden and Barrack Obama. Democrat Senators Chuck Schumer and Hilary Clinton also supported the measure. Ultimately, the city lost its bid to prevent the construction of a 1.8-mile, 14-foot-tall border fence was constructed.
In a bid to ease city officials’ concerns at the time, gates were constructed at the park entrance with assurances that public access would not be impeded from using recreational facilities at the park. The federal land upon which the fence was constructed is now part of the dispute between Abbott and the Biden administration.
The agreement remained in place, with residents being allowed access to the park until the recent seizure of the park by state authorities. The temporary entrance gates installed by the Texas Military Department sit on the federal border fence footprint and now preclude the public from accessing the soccer fields and baseball diamond within the park. According to authorities from the city of Eagle Pass, the city’s public golf course, which is also within the park’s confines, remains open to the public.
Although tensions continue to build between the State of Texas and the Biden administration over the use and access of the park by the Border Patrol, the tensions appear to be much less visible at the park itself. Migrant crossings had reduced to a near trickle in the area compared to December when a record-breaking 71,000 migrants crossed the Rio Grande into the Del Rio Border Patrol Sector — most choosing to cross in Eagle Pass.
According to a source within CBP, not authorized to speak to the media, migrant apprehensions have dropped to roughly 500 per day in Eagle Pass, down from more than 2,000 per day in late December.
The source told Breitbart Texas, “The battle is not between the law enforcement agents on the ground here, it’s between Austin and Washington, D.C., we just respond to different authorities who have much different view on border policies. Until that changes, we’re stuck in the middle.”
Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol. Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.
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