Tensions are rising between Joe Biden's administration and Texas over the immigration crisis. Federal and local authorities continue to clash over policing the border with Mexico. The pulse between the two has heated up recently after three Mexican migrants – a young mother and her two children, ages eight and 10 – drowned in the Rio Grande while trying to reach the United States. The back-and-forth between the parties has made clear that the fight has made one of the most dangerous avenues for international immigration even deadlier.
On Monday evening, the Biden administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene in Washington's lawsuit against Texas over its surveillance of the border with Mexico. In their request, federal authorities explain that last Friday, January 12, at approximately 9:00 p.m. (local time), the Mexican government informed the Border Patrol that two Mexican migrants were near a boat ramp on the US side of the border in trouble are border. Flow. The discovery came in Shelby Park, an area of Eagle Pass County that has become the epicenter of an immigration crisis that poses a threat to Biden in a year when reelection is at stake.
In their statement, Mexican officials also reported that three people drowned in the same area an hour earlier, around 8 p.m. “The Mexican people have not entered the United States,” the Mexican Foreign Ministry said in a statement released Sunday. The victims were originally from the state of Mexico and have not been identified at this time. The bodies were rescued by the National Immigration Institute Beta Group and the National Guard.
After being notified by Mexican authorities, agents from the Border Patrol, the federal agency responsible for policing the 3,000-kilometer-long border with Mexico, attempted to enter the Shelby Park area, which has been patrolled by state police since Jan. 11 . “Through a closed gate, uniformed members of the Texas National Guard refused entry to the Border Patrol agent on the grounds that they had been instructed to prevent the group from entering the park,” the letter addressed to the Supreme Court states. The supervisor of the stationed guards reported that the orders prevented the passage of federal agents even in “emergency situations.”
Although the Texas National Guard sent some agents to investigate, the endangered migrants were rescued by Mexican authorities despite being on the US side. They were taken out of the water hypothermic and returned to Mexico along with two other people who had tried to enter the United States on Friday evening.
According to the federal government, the incident reflects “firm efforts” by Texas to control four kilometers of the border. “It is impossible to say what could have happened if the Border Police had had the access it normally has to the area, including the vehicles that allow it to monitor the area (…) at least the Mexican one Colleagues can be helped.” “We accomplished the rescue mission, but Texas made it impossible,” says the Justice Department.
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The deaths of the three migrants have sparked sharp criticism of Republican Greg Abbott's government. “This is a tragedy and the state bears responsibility for it,” Democratic Congressman Henry Cuéllar, one of the state's most prominent Latinos, said over the weekend. “Republicans have successfully dehumanized immigrants so that there is no compassion in cases like this,” said Verónica Escobar, another Democratic representative from Texas in Congress.
Rep. Escobar recalled that Governor Abbott told a conservative radio host that his administration was doing everything in its power to increase border surveillance. “The one thing we won’t do is shoot migrants because the Biden administration would accuse us of murder,” the president said on Jan. 11, a day before the Rio Grande incident was recorded.
Washington has asked the Supreme Court to overturn a decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that initially bars the Border Patrol from destroying barbed wire installed by Texas agents at the border. Attorney General Ken Paxton has said that the appeals court is already moving quickly on the matter and that this is a maneuver by the Biden administration to change the appeals process.
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