The Biden administration has requested that the Supreme Court allow federal agents to cut concertina wire after a lower court ruled that the federal government is not permitted to cut the wire.
A ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last month states that federal agents are prohibited from “damaging, destroying, or otherwise interfering with Texas’s c-wire fence in the vicinity of Eagle Pass, Texas.”
An emergency appeal submitted by the U.S. Department of Justice filed with the Supreme Court on Tuesday requests that the ruling from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals be put on hold, according to The Associated Press.
The filing claims that upholding the Fifth Circuit’s ruling “would leave the United States at the mercy of states that could seek to force the federal government to conform the implementation of federal immigration law to varying state-law regimes,” as reported by Reuters.
U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar stated in the filing that “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.”
“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,” added Prelogar, according to The Guardian.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott responded to the request from the federal government, saying, “Americans & courts will reject Biden’s hostility to immigration laws.”
“TX will continue to deploy National Guard to build border barriers & repel illegal immigrants,” added the governor in a social media post.
This appeal comes following months of litigation between the two sides stemming from the concertina wire initially placed on the border by Texas to prevent the flow of unlawful migrants into the state.
The legal back-and-forth between Texas and the federal government prompted Abbott to say during a speech in October that the state is “at war with the White House, fighting to secure our own border,” as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
These lawsuits come amidst a growing crisis at the border with record-high numbers of unlawful migrants entering the U.S. through the southern border.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection reportedly had more than 300,000 encounters with unlawful migrants at the border in December, breaking the previous monthly record of 269,735 encounters in September.