After four years of battling Joe Biden, Texas governor scores another legal victory

This week, Texas Governor Gregg Abbott achieved yet another court victory in his four-year battle against President Joe Biden over the Southern border.

The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said on Wednesday that the federal government lacks the power to take down razor wire that Abbott ordered to be installed along the Texas-Mexico border.

According to the court, as long as federal officers have “necessary access” to both sides of the wire, it may stay in place. This includes the wire installed at Eagle Pass’s Shelby Park, which was taken over by the Texas Military Department in January 2024 to prevent illegal immigration.

on the previous several years, Abbott and the Biden administration have clashed, especially on how to stop undocumented migrants from entering Texas from Mexico. When the Supreme Court decided in January 2024 that federal authorities may remove razor-wire that Abbott had ordered to be installed along the border, the governor reacted angrily, citing his state’s “constitutional authority to defend and protect itself.”

Donald Trump will be sworn in as president in January after winning the election on November 5, which should give Abbott a much more accommodative federal partner. Trump’s “border czar,” former Immigration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Tom Homan, recently visited the border and commended Abbott for having “done a great job so far.”

“I assure you that the Trump administration will not pursue ongoing legal action against him for attempting to secure the border,” he said. We will collaborate with him to provide complete security.”

The court stated that “after days of testimony, the district court agreed with Texas on the facts: not only was Border Patrol unhampered by the wire, but its agents had breached the wire numerous times ‘for no apparent purpose other than to allow migrants easier entrance further inland.'”

Erin B. Corcoran, executive director of the Kroc Institute of International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame and a specialist in immigration law, told Newsweek that the decision was “surprising to me.” She continued: “Historically the courts have been fairly deferential to the federal government with respect to immigration enforcement.”

The decision, according to former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani, head of West Coast Trial Lawyers, “won’t necessarily set a precedent in other cases,” but he called it “a setback for the Biden administration and the federal government” in an interview with Newsweek.

He went on to say: “The Fifth Circuit framed this as a private property rights matter, despite the fact that many saw it as an immigration law problem, which has traditionally been solely within the jurisdiction of the federal government. It will be intriguing to see if the Biden administration files another appeal with the Supreme Court and whether the Trump government’s Department of Justice drops the case once he becomes office.

Abbott began Operation Lone Star, a joint effort by the Texas Military Department and the Texas Department of Public Safety, in March 2021 to fortify the state’s border with Mexico.

Thousands of Texas National Guard troops and law enforcement officers have been sent to the border as part of the campaign, and physical barriers like barbed wire fences have been built. To deter river crossings, floating buoys have been positioned in the Rio Grande, spaced apart by metal sheets that resemble saws.

Numerous court disputes have resulted from Abbott’s plan, which has caused continuing difficulties with the federal government. The action was characterized as a “power grab” by Corcoran, who said that it was “a real attempt at least to say that states have the ability to take immigration, at least enforcement functions, into their own hands which is not how it’s been in the past.”

According to the legal expert, the conflict between Abbott and the Biden administration is a result of a persistent conflict between the federal and state governments’ competing authorities, which “back and forth in different administrations based on who has power.”

Abbott suffered a setback in January 2024 when the Supreme Court decided that Border Patrol officers may take down razor wire that had been erected along Texas’s border with Mexico. However, Corcoran said that the ruling was based on a technical issue rather than the case’s merits.

In a retaliatory letter, Abbott claimed that illegal immigration into Texas was a “invasion,” using the state’s “constitutional authority to defend and protect itself,” by which he said that “is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary.”

In June, a judge rejected evidence from Adrian Cortez, an officer with the International Boundary and Water Commission, which led to a legal win for Texan authorities involved in a legal dispute over their floating buoys in the Rio Grande. The Texas governor gained a significant victory in July when an appeals court decided that floating buoys positioned in the Rio Grande could stay. This week, he received more support with the razor wire verdict.

Despite pleas from many Democratic leaders to federalize the Texas National Guard, which would have taken it out of Abbott’s direct authority, the Biden administration did not take any action.

Abbott’s four-year conflict with Washington, according to Corcoran, may have a long-term effect on the distribution of power between the federal and state governments, favoring the latter, as Newsweek reported.

But in my opinion, from a structural standpoint, it’s a power grab that involves more than simply immigration, she said. Regardless of the political party in control of the federal government, you may see instances when states feel more empowered to implement or enforce their own agendas.

Thousands of suspected illegal migrants were bussed to Democratic-run cities including New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Denver by Abbott’s squad. However, a Republican Party of Texas official told Newsweek in August that because there had been a significant decline in the number of attempted migrant crossings into the state, this was no longer necessary.

Regarding the Trump administration, Corcoran continued, “Immigration tensions may be resolved but I think it can embolden the state to feel that they have the ability to regulate and enforce issues that have been historically and traditionally understood by the courts to be federal in function.”

Daniel Miller, the leader of the separatist Texas Nationalist Movement and a supporter of stricter border controls, told Newsweek that Wednesday’s court decision was “not unexpected.”

He continued: “In terms of practicality, the Biden administration is essentially out of time to do anything with it before the new administration takes office.”