The Biden administration has not sued. It did win a Supreme Court ruling that it could take down the razor wire that Texas has deployed in Shelby Park and elsewhere, which the administration said has led to drowning deaths among migrants. It has now cut razor wire in some sections of the border, but not in Shelby Park, which it can’t access.
Three Biden administration officials said the Supreme Court’s recent razor wire ruling was a win in federal government’s fight with Texas over Shelby Park, but they concede it does not explicitly give control of the area back to Border Patrol.
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The three Biden administration officials told NBC News they do not want a confrontation between Border Patrol and Texas National Guard, but they still consider legal action a tool they might deploy. Shortly after Texas started blocking the Border Patrol from accessing Shelby Park, a mother and two children drowned while crossing the Rio Grande. The officials say they might have been saved if Border Patrol had been able to operate its equipment to surveil the river and respond to migrants in distress.
For now, however, optics mean the administration is holding fire, said a former Department of Homeland Security official. The official said that between the fight to pass a border bill, defend Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in an impeachment fight, and other lawsuits challenging Texas, taking on the Republican-led state would ignite another fire at a time when the administration wants to appear tougher on border security.
I feel like my last reply addressed that, but since you are asking directly I’ll be explicit. It does not make their entry legal. Their entry was already legal.
That’s what I mean when I say it is up to us to guide them through the complex process we’ve set up – they are seeking asylum which is a status we recognize. They might not know the proper legal incantations or arcane procedures for that, but they aren’t the ones who invented those legal incantations and arcane procedures. They are refugees doing their best. They should be treated as innocent until proven guilty.
It is not illegal to, while acting in good faith, get lost in the bureaucracy, ESPECIALLY when that bureaucracy is designed from the ground up to be unmanageable in order to disparage your right, ESPECIALLY when your own personal circumstances leave your life at risk.
Sure, you can point towards people who clearly knew that particular point of crossing was not legal. And I will point to people who already had their proper rights disparaged without due process based on how much of a failure the “legal” crossing was.
If you’re only using these words like “illegal” in a 100% legalistic framework, where we care about the letter of the statutes and not the actual rights and people the statutes assert and protect… stop. Don’t do that. That’s harmful.