The Joe Biden administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow the U.S. Border Patrol to remove razor wire at barricades along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Biden administration made the request amid its ongoing dispute with Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.
“The dispute is over whether the Border Patrol has the legal authority to cut concertina wire that Texas had installed on the banks of the Rio Grande. The state sued last year to stop the wire cutting, saying it illegally destroys state property and undermines security in order to assist migrants in crossing the border,” noted CNN.
“A federal appeals court last month ordered Border Patrol agents to stop the practice while court proceedings play out, and the Justice Department on Tuesday filed an emergency application, asking the Supreme Court to overturn that decision,” it added.
The department wrote in its appeal to the Supreme Court that “federal law unambiguously grants Border Patrol agents the authority, without a warrant, to access private land within 25 miles of the international border.”
A Texas National Guard soldier runs while setting up razor wire around a makeshift immigrant camp located between the Rio Grande and the U.S.-Mexico border fence on May 10, 2023 in El Paso, Texas. (John Moore/Getty Images)
The Biden administration, which has been criticized for its handling of the crisis and migrant surge at the U.S. Southern border, argued that border patrol agents need to cut the concertina wire in order to provide medical assistance to migrants in need or to apprehend migrants that crossed the border.
The Biden DOJ also wrote to the Supreme Court that the previous appeals court ruling has “serious on-the-ground consequences that warrant this Court’s intervention.”
“Like other law-enforcement officers, Border Patrol agents operating under difficult circumstances at the border must make context-dependent, sometimes split-second decisions about how to enforce federal immigration laws while maintaining public safety,” they wrote.
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“But the injunction prohibits agents from passing through or moving physical obstacles erected by the State that prevent access to the very border they are charged with patrolling and the individuals they are charged with apprehending and inspecting.”
The appeals court ruling also “removes a key form of officer discretion to prevent the development of deadly situations,” the DOJ wrote, including “mitigating the serious risks of drowning and death from hypothermia or heat exposure.”
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