In another string of measures taken by the Texas state government to stop undocumented immigration, Texas law enforcement officials have begun placing razor wire across the southern border. The land in this region has been fundamentally altered by Texas’s construction to make the border harder to cross.
On top of the damage the razor wire causes to the environment, the wire has maimed and killed dozens of immigrants who have attempted to cross into the United States.
The U.S. federal government has taken issue with Texas’s actions for several reasons.
The major concern for the federal government is that Texas’s actions on the border seem to overstep the federal government’s authority on border security. Immigration control and border security have strictly been the purview of the federal government since the United States v. Arizona case in 2012.
The other concern of the federal government is the harm Texas’s border policy is doing to asylum seekers coming to the United States. Texas has ordered its state troopers to turn large groups of migrants away, forcing the migrants back toward Mexico through water and other hazards.
Texas’s actions have led to multiple migrant injuries, which has alarmed the federal government.
Texas has been arguing that the razor wire and other measures are a necessity because of the large number of asylum seekers coming to southern border states. Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, has framed the migrants as hostile invaders. In its attempt to control border policy, Texas invoked the invasion clause to justify its actions.
The invasion clause gives states the right to defend themselves in the case of invasion from another state or foreign country. Texas claims that migrants coming to the United States constitutes an invasion and, thus, they argue that Texas is allowed to invoke the invasion clause.
However, this argument is is highly dubious because the migrants do not constitute a foreign army nor is there any proof they are being sent to the U.S. by any nations.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court decided against Texas’s border policy. The Court ruled that federal border agents are allowed to remove the razor wire and other obstacles that impede the work of border patrol. Despite the lack of legal legitimacy to Texas’s border policy and the documented harm it has caused, Abbott insists the razor wire will remain and will be increased, putting more lives at risk and going directly against the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Twenty-five Republican Governors have endorsed Texas’s actions, which has put the country in a very precarious bind.
The federal government must either act on the Supreme Court’s decision and stop Texas from controlling the border or the federal government must let Texas get away with its policy. The former would anger Republicans, and the latter would lead to more harm and a dangerous precedent that could unravel the federal-state government relationship.
While the Supreme Court decision refutes Texas’s legal claim for their actions on the border, it does not address Abbott’s material arguments: that the migrants coming over are criminals, terrorists, violent, that they steal jobs from legal Americans and that they are a strain on the economy.
The rhetoric from Republicans is baseless as data suggests that undocumented immigrants commit far fewer crimes than native-born citizens.
Republicans regularly claim that terrorists are crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. However, there is no evidence of a terrorist attack happening by undocumented immigrants from the southern border.
Setting the record straight on undocumented immigrants is important because negative rhetoric can have a very powerful impact on people’s actions, voting behavior and policy decisions that will significantly harm undocumented immigrants.
