CV NEWS FEED // Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has defied an order by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to remove floating border security barriers in the Rio Grande River.
In a letter addressed to President Joe Biden on Monday, Abbott wrote “Texas will see you in court, Mr. President” and stated that Texas would not comply with an order that weakens its defense.
On June 8, Abbott announced that Texas would erect a maritime border in the Rio Grande’s Eagle Pass. The barriers were installed in July.
Biden’s DOJ has threatened to sue the state of Texas if Abbott failed to remove the barriers, claiming they violated the U.S. Rivers and Harbors Act.
Abbott responded in his letter that the section of the Act referenced by the DOJ did not apply, and that Biden would be breaking both the U.S. and Texas Constitutions’ assertions that states have the right to maintain their defenses.
The Washington Examiner reported that over 5 million noncitizens have been taken into custody for illegal border crossings since Biden took office.
Abbot mentioned in his letter that prior to his construction of the maritime border, the United Nations declared in 2021 that the U.S. and Mexican border was the “deadliest land crossing in the world.” Abbott also pointed out that hundreds of migrants have drowned in attempted river crossings. He told Biden that Texas’ floating wall is not responsible for the border’s “crisis of inhumanity,” adding:
Neither of us wants to see another death in the Rio Grande River. Yet your open-border policies encourage migrants to risk their lives by crossing illegally through the water, instead of safely and legally at a port of entry. Nobody drowns on a bridge.
Abbott wrote that the DOJ’s threatened lawsuit is a “side issue” to deflect from Biden’s mismanagement of the border crisis.
He added that the president must implement U.S. immigration laws to stop migrants from taking life-threatening risks and to “save Texans, and indeed all Americans, from deadly drugs like fentanyl, cartel violence, and the horrors of human trafficking.”
The Biden administration has not yet responded to Abbott’s letter.
