On January 14th, the Division of Homeland Safety despatched a cease-and-desist letter to Texas Lawyer Normal Ken Paxton demanding that the Texas Navy Division finish it’s “enhanced border security measures in Eagle Pass’s Shelby park.” DHS demanded they comply by right this moment, January seventeenth. The Gateway Pundit reported that armed Texas Nationwide Guardsmen had kicked out U.S. Border Patrol and CBP brokers from Eagle Cross’s Shelby Park within the Rio Grande sector.
AG Paxton printed a response letter right this moment debunking a number of claims made by DHS of their unique letter, stating, “Because the facts and law side with Texas, the State will continue utilizing its constitutional authority to defend her territory, and I will continue defending those lawful efforts in court.”
“Your demand letter rests on a more fundamental misunderstanding of federal law and the role of sovereign States within our constitutional order,” writes AG Paxton. He then cites the federal statute DHS invoked of their letter that offers US Border Patrol “warrantless access to land within 25 miles of the border”. However AG Paxton factors out that it states “for the purpose of patrolling the border to prevent the illegal entry of aliens into the United States.”
AG Paxton argued that as a result of a federal court docket discovered DHS as an “utter failure…to deter, prevent and halt unlawful entry into the United States”, DHS can not “claim the statutory duties [it is] so obviously derelict in enforcing as excuses to puncture to puncture [Texas’s] attempts to shore up the [Biden Administration’s] failing system.” Texas v DHS, 2023 WL 8285223.
In return, AG Paxton wrote that the Biden Administration had didn’t uphold their duties below Article IV, Part 4 of the U.S. Structure that states the federal authorities “shall protect each of [the States] against Invasion.”
The letter then lists a number of “false claims” that “must be debunked”, together with the declare that U.S. Border Patrol is being restricted from responding to a medical emergency partially as a result of they withdrew from Shelby Park final yr:
- Texas permits immediate entry into Shelby Park by any U.S. Border Patrol personnel
responding to a medical emergency, and this entry will not be “limited to use of the boat
ramp,” as you say. TMD has ordered its Guardsmen to not impede lifesaving take care of
aliens who illegally cross the Rio Grande. To that finish, TMD has erected gates that enable
for speedy admission when federal personnel talk the existence of some medical
exigency.- Your supposed dedication “to rendering emergency assistance to individuals in need”
is belied by the truth that U.S. Border Patrol withdrew from Shelby Park final yr and
suggested the Texas Division of Public Security that federal personnel wouldn’t be current to
administer assist until Texas known as for assist. Furthermore, the Del Rio Sector seems to be the
solely place alongside the Rio Grande the place DHS doesn’t preserve boats on the water across the
clock to offer water-rescue capabilities.- Your try and blame Texas for 3 migrant deaths on January 12, 2024 is vile and, as
you now needs to be conscious, utterly inaccurate. “Three individuals drowned” that evening on the Mexican facet of the Rio Grande, however that tragedy is your fault. Opposite to your letter, TMD didn’t stop U.S. Border Patrol from coming into Shelby Park to
try a water rescue of migrants in misery. The federal brokers on the gate didn’t even
have a ship, and they didn’t request entry primarily based on any medical exigency. As a substitute, the
federal brokers instructed TMD’s employees sergeant that Mexican officers had already recovered
useless our bodies and that the state of affairs was below management. Texas’s Guardsmen nonetheless
made a diligent search, solely to substantiate that Mexican officers had recovered the migrants’
our bodies, downriver from the Shelby Park boat ramp and on their facet of the river.- Texas has seen no proof, and also you cite none, exhibiting that the migrants who drowned
really reached the Texas shore. And this regardless of TMD Guardsmen surveilling the
waters of the Rio Grande close to Shelby Park with spotlights, night-vision goggles, and
thermal-imaging units.- As a federal court docket has already dominated, it’s DHS and Biden Administration insurance policies which can be
main migrants to danger their lives, and generally lose them, attempting to cross the Rio
Grande. Should you actually care about migrants being put in “imminent danger to life and
safety,” your company ought to cease driving them into the waters of the river. No person
drowns on a bridge. A federal court docket not too long ago rebuked the Biden Administration for
creating this harmful state of affairs: “If [DHS] agents are going to allow migrants to enter
the country, and indeed facilitate their doing so, why make them undertake the dangerous
task of crossing the river? Would it not be easier, and safer, to receive them at a port of
entry?” Texas v. DHS, 2023 WL 8285223, at *4 (W.D. Tex. Nov. 29, 2023). By
“creat[ing] a perverse incentive for aliens to attempt to cross” the Rio Grande, the court docket
discovered, you’re “begetting life-threatening crises for aliens and agents both.”- Though Shelby Park does sit on “municipal land owned by the City of Eagle Pass,” as
you say, TMD has now taken that land from the Metropolis for law-enforcement and disasterrelief functions in accordance with Texas Authorities Code § 418.017(c). It’s immaterial that U.S. Customs and Border Safety entered right into a “Memorandum of Agreement
with Eagle Pass . . . on December 13, 2015,” as a result of the State of Texas by no means accepted
that transaction as required by Article IV, § 10 of the Texas Structure. Your federal
company can not have one thing that was not the Metropolis’s to provide.
Attorney General Ken Paxton Responds to Biden Administration’s Demand that Texas “Cease and Desist” Securing its Border
“Slightly than addressing Texas’s pressing requests for defense, President Biden has approved DHS to ship a threatening letter via its attorneys. However… pic.twitter.com/19nOKDU8F5
— Unhealthy Kitty Unleashed (@pepesgrandma) January 17, 2024
