The Justice Department on Monday sued the state of Texas over the installation of a floating wall on the Rio Grande, intended to prevent migrants from crossing the border that separates Mexico from the United States. The Joe Biden administration thus goes on the attack of Governor Greg Abbott, who ordered the installation of the barrier, made up of huge orange buoys, last June.
It is about a 350-metre obstacle, which the federal government criticizes for its “humanitarian implications”. Abbott did not have permission from either country to install it between Eagle Pass, Texas, and Piedras Negras, in Coahuila, on the other side.
It is the latest provocation from the governor, who is confronting Washington on the management of the border. Under a plan launched two years ago under the title Operation Lone Star (after the nickname of the state of Texas), he placed barbed wire at some points of the demarcation line, arrested migrants on charges of trespassing and sent them on publicly paid buses to cities with a Democratic majority, such as Chicago, New York or Washington. Some of those arriving in the capital are destined for the home of Vice President Kamala Harris, to whose doors she wanted to bring the crisis being experienced in the south of her state, which shares 2,000 kilometers with Mexico, crossed by 28 international bridges and border crossings.
The complaint did not surprise the governor, who on Monday sent a letter to President Biden accusing him of not stopping the flow of migration and defending his right to take the measures that the federal government does not adopt to attack the crisis. “Texas awaits you in court, Mr. President,” Abbott writes in the letter.
The Justice Department had given him until that day to rectify it, because, assistant attorney general Vanita Gupta told him in writing, the buoys pose “a risk to the safety of navigation in the Rio Grande, in addition to their humanitarian implications.” Gupta also said the gesture prompted “diplomatic protests from Mexico” and could “hurt US foreign policy”.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre accused Abbott of acting in bad faith in this matter. “The only person who is wreaking havoc is the governor,” she added in her daily briefing to reporters’ questions. “That’s what he keeps doing: inhumane political pantomime.”
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Jean-Pierre boasted that the border is experiencing the lowest number of illegal crossings in two years, after Title 42, a regulation imposed by the Donald Trump administration under the guise of halting the advance of the pandemic, was revoked in May. It allowed for the rapid expulsion of migrants, who were deported back to Mexico within minutes. Title 8 alone now applies, which in practice means a tightening of the conditions for applying for asylum. It allowed the Barack Obama administration to deport more than three million migrants in eight years.
It’s not the first time that Abbott, who is serving his third term as governor, and the Biden administration have faced each other in court. Attorney General Merrick Garland accused the state in 2021 of overstepping the bounds of his powers by authorizing Texas police officers to stop vehicles carrying migrants on the grounds that they could be contributing to the spread of the coronavirus.
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