Appeals court blocks Biden administration from removing razor wire in border feud with Texas
By Tierney Sneed, CNN
(CNN) — A federal appeals court has blocked the Biden administration from removing razor wire put up by Texas officials on the Mexico border.
The ruling from the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals marks the latest development in a multi-front legal feud over when federal authority supersedes state action in immigration enforcement.
Texas sued the Biden administration more than a year ago when Border Patrol agents cut down razor wire – also known as concertina wire or “c-wire” – that state officials had placed at the border with Mexico as part of its own efforts to prevent border crossing. In an emergency appeal in January, the Supreme Court sided 5-4 with the Biden administration, allowing federal agents to remove the wire. But the dispute returned to the 5th Circuit after a trial judge did more fact finding about the claims the administration was making in the case about how the wire allegedly impacted federal operations at the border.
In Wednesday’s ruling, the 5th Circuit rejected the administration’s arguments that the federal government had so-called sovereign immunity prohibiting the lawsuit.
Its order barring federal agents from destroying the wire includes the caveats that the Department of Homeland Security has access to the land on both sides of the wire for “immigration law enforcement and emergency purposes,” including at an area known as Shelby Park that was at the center of the dispute.
Two migrants drowned in that area while the emergency appeal was being litigated at the beginning of this year, though Texas has disputed that the wire impeded efforts to save the migrants.
The new 5th Circuit ruling, embracing findings by the trial court, said that “Texas’s move into the park, it turned out, had only a marginal effect on Border Patrol’s access and had nothing to do with the drownings.”
Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez, a Biden appointee, dissented from the majority opinion, which was written by Judge Kyle Duncan and joined by Judge Don Willett, both Trump appointees.
The case is one of several ongoing immigration-related court fights between Texas and the Biden administration that may see a change in the Justice Department’s posture once President-elect Donald Trump takes office. The Trump team has indicated that it wants to collaborate with Texas on its efforts at the border as part of the incoming administration’s plans for broader immigration crackdown.
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