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The Biden administration is suing the state of Texas over its increasingly aggressive approach to policing the country’s southern border, upping the ante in a fraught political stand-off over migration.
In a complaint filed on Monday, the US Department of Justice said that the installation of a floating barricade set to stretch at least 1,000 feet across the Rio Grande river had failed to secure the requisite federal permissions.
“We allege that Texas has flouted federal law by installing a barrier in the Rio Grande without obtaining the required federal authorisation,” said Vanita Gupta, associate US attorney-general.
The case marks the most significant intervention taken by the Democratic administration over the border and comes as Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, intensifies a divisive crackdown on migrants seeking to enter the state. His push, dubbed “Operation Lone Star,” has led to almost 400,000 migrants being detained since March 2021.
Tens of thousands of those have been bussed to mostly-Democratic cities on the east and west coasts of America, in a move lambasted by critics as political theatre.
The state began construction of the new floating barrier — made up of a series of orange buoys strung together — near the city of Eagle Pass earlier this month.
In the federal case, filed in an Austin court on Monday, the DoJ said it was “deprived of the opportunity to evaluate risks the barrier poses to public safety and the environment”, to mitigate potential risks, and to assess whether the project was in the public interest, according to the complaint.
The DoJ is seeking relief including having Texas remove the floating barrier, prohibiting more construction, and awarding the government costs and disbursements.
In a letter sent to President Joe Biden on Monday ahead of the DoJ’s filing, Abbott said he had “asserted Texas’s sovereign interest in protecting [her] borders” and claimed that the case against the state was “a side issue”.
“If you truly care about human life, you must begin enforcing federal immigration laws,” the governor wrote. “Texas will see you in court, Mr President.”
With people moving across the Americas in record numbers, the crisis on the southern US border has become a big political headache for the Biden administration and a culture war flashpoint.
The issue was thrust back into the spotlight in May with the expiry of a pandemic-era policy known as Title 42 that allowed US border agents to quickly send migrants back to Mexico instead of processing their asylum cases.
Karine Jean-Pierre, White House press secretary, told reporters on Monday that Abbott was taking “dangerous” and “unlawful” actions that were “undermining” the administration’s efforts to secure the US-Mexico border.
“The governor’s action is making it difficult to access the river, patrol the area . . . and arrest individuals who attempt to enter the country unlawfully,” Jean-Pierre said. “The one person that is sowing chaos is governor Abbott . . . That’s what he continues to do . . . political stunts in an inhumane way.”
US homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall is leading a US delegation to Mexico City this week to participate in meetings with Mexican and Canadian officials in part to discuss “our regional migration challenge”, according to a White House official.
A Biden administration official was keen to point out that since the lifting of Title 42, unlawful border crossings have fallen to their lowest levels in more than two years. The official said more than 24,000 agents and officers are working to secure the border.
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