The situation in Texas at the border is getting more tense. The Department of Homeland Security sent a letter to the Texas government, demanding access to Shelby Park by January 26. The park is at the epicenter of the dispute between Texas and the federal government.
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The Biden administration says Border Patrol can’t do its job of protecting the border without access to the park. Texas says they have a constitutional right to protect themselves.
Texas National Guard troops have closed access to the park to Border Patrol agents. Before the Guard troops took control, DHS was using the park to process thousands of migrants, many of them illegal, before releasing them into the interior of the United States.
Governor Greg Abbott upped the ante in the crisis by taking the unusual step of calling for volunteers to patrol the border. Abbott wants “to deploy border security assets to high threat areas to deny criminal organizations the ability to illegally move drugs and people into Texas,” according to the Texas Military Department’s (TMD) website.
Volunteers will work with the TMD to patrol areas where Border Patrol has been lax.
The Biden administration has argued the wire, installed as part of Operation Lone Star, restricts Border Patrol agents from accessing parts of the border. Abbott, meanwhile, has slammed “Biden’s reckless open-border policies,” and tweeted after the Supreme Court’s decision that the wire is an “effective deterrent against the illegal border crossings.”
In apparent defiance of the court’s decision, he said: “We continue to deploy this razor wire to repel illegal immigration.”
In a letter on January 24 after the ruling, the Department of Homeland Security demanded “full access” to the border by January 26, CNN reported. The letter, addressed to Texas officials, said members of the federal Customs and Border Protection units have been blocked from accessing the area, per CNN.
Newsweek has approached Abbott’s office to ask if a new call for volunteers has been issued.
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Also, Abbott has ordered more razor wire to the border.
“Texas is doing every measure, putting every measure in place to prevent that to try to discourage that,” said Texas Department of Public Safety Lt. Chris Olivarez. “But yet, at the federal level, the federal government has not done anything as far as trying to discourage illegal immigration, especially those that want to cross a dangerous river.”
Related: Is Joe Biden’s Border Crisis Creating a Constitutional Crisis?
Will Washington fire on Fort Sumter and look to tear down the razor wire in Shelby Park and elsewhere? Don’t ask White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
”I don’t have all the specifics about what border security plans to do or how they’ll do it,” said KJP. “Look, we’re glad the Supreme Court made the decision to vacate the injunction that prevented border security to actually do their jobs, and it got in the way.”
Leave it to Biden’s press secretary to make things even muddier.