Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has told a right-wing radio host that there’s only one tool the state isn’t using to stop migrants from crossing the border into Texas: gun violence, because it would prompt a response from the pesky federal government.
“The only thing that we are not doing is we’re not shooting people who come across the border—because, of course, the Biden administration would charge us with murder,” the Republican governor told former NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch on her radio show last week.
Biden isn’t a law enforcement official. He’s not a DA. He’s not a police officer. He doesn’t have the ability to have you arrested. I suspect Abbott knows this, but his constituents are too fucking stupid to understand the difference.
Biden is human though, which apparently disqualifies him from the Republican Party
The president can absolutely arrest people
in a “citizens arrest”, sure. But he physically himself cannot perform police functions. If he orders an arrest and the arrest is illegal then that person would be acquitted.
What law says that?
Can you provide something that says he can? Let’s see it.
The US constitution? The President can do really anything they want within the law. There’s no really reason The President can’t arrest people.
Anyone can do whatever they want within the law……
No they can’t. And arresting people is simply not in their purview.
You’re asking for evidence of something that doesn’t exist. If I’m wrong, point to the laws and rules that say I can’t tell you that.
For folk in the States it’s a mix of the 4th, 5th and 14th Amendments of the Constitution with mostly individual state laws determining the validity of what constitutes an officer of the law and how a citizen arrest works as part of that individual State’s Criminal code.
If you’re Canadian it’s federal law 494 of the Criminal Code.
To be honest it’s really bloody difficult trying to accurately cite US law in discussion because States have a frankly ridiculous amount of binding power on their citizens which means there are 50+ laws about how exactly citizen versus peace officer arrest is handled… But most of them outline fairly specific limitations like it whether a citizen’s arrest can be applicable for misdemeanors, restrictions on what constitutes a reasonable use of force, rights of an arrested person, what constitutes a humane restriction of person and the requirement of validating the arrest with a judge within a certain time period… You know Haebeous Corpus and all that.
Biden’s Presidential powers probably give him a lot of extra leeway against laws that would persecute him for doing an improper citizen’s arrest but that wouldn’t make an improper arrest stick any more than if you did it. A President is still legally a citizen and not a law enforcement officer.
I’m sorry, do you think we need a law that says the President can’t personally arrest people?
Yikes… Read a book.
Off-topic, but how do you get the 3 Arrows symbol in front of your username?
You can make it anything if you got to your profile settings. Upper right hand corner if your lemmy instance’s home page usually.
On the other hand, if Abbot did indeed order his people to start murdering migrants, you know that the decision to move forward with prosecution would need at least a half nod from Biden. At least on the federal level.
No it wouldn’t. The president isn’t part of the judiciary.
The Judiciary doesn’t decide prosecution, the Attorney General does.
In this case, that would be Merrick Garland, who was appointed by Biden, and serves on Biden’s Cabinet.
Do remember that the President of the United States is the head of the Executive Branch, of which the Department of Justice is a part. This is basic High School civics stuff.
The AG acts independently of the president. This issue will never land on the president’s desk. The only recourse he has is to fire the AG if he does (not) prosecute. If he does that he should be impeached.
That “independence” is mostly a fiction.
It’s not actually enforced by any law.
Yeah because it’s federal policy not to just shoot somebody that crossed the border. Put the fucking politics aside for a second, this guy said the only reason we don’t kill them is because it’s against federal law. Yeah no shit.
It’s not the reason sane people don’t start murdering, but it is the reason Abbott hasn’t.
Says more about Abbott than it does the rest of us.
But no, the point was that arresting a sitting governor would be a massive political move, and the AG would likely run that by his boss (the president) before doing it. But I get the feeling he would still do it regardless, and that Biden would okay it regardless.