Texas keeps on winning in its battle to stop the flood of illegal immigrants, and this latest victory is the most decisive one yet.
On May 29, the U.S. District Court Southern District of Texas McAllen Division ruled that Texas can finish its border wall and that the Biden administration cannot stop it. The Biden administration had a deadline of July 29 to appeal the decision, but it didn’t.
The court’s order remains in effect, and Texas can finish what it started under the Trump administration.
In 2020 and 2021, Congress gave about $1.4 billion to build the border wall. The Texas General Land Office (GLO) owns a lot of land near the U.S.-Mexico border, including 31 miles along the Rio Grande. Texas started building its border wall on this GLO land.
President Joe Biden stopped the wall construction on his first day in office. Since contracts were already in place, taxpayers would be charged $6 million immediately and then $3 million every day not to build the wall. The materials purchased for the wall were left outside and started to rust.
In October 2021, Missouri and Texas took legal action against President Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, asking the court to make them finish building the border wall. Former Texas official George P. Bush also joined the lawsuit.
In response to the lawsuits, Secretary Mayorkas argued that he has the authority to decide how to handle policies. He claimed that even though the law says the money should be used to build the border wall, he can choose how to spend it. Mayorkas used the money for the border wall on environmental projects.
U.S. District Court Judge Drew Tipton from the Southern District of Texas decided on the combined cases. He ordered the government to stop using money for the border wall on other projects.
Tipton did not agree with Mayorkas’ view on having the “freedom” to spend allocated funds. Other federal judges in states like Florida have also disagreed with Mayorkas’s claims.
Now, Tipton has reaffirmed that the government must follow federal laws and doesn’t have the freedom to ignore them. Without this freedom, the way DHS spends the money doesn’t follow the rules of the Administrative Procedures Act.
Tipton ruled that the federal government must stop using the money for things like fixing existing barriers, adding new features to old barriers, or other similar tasks. He wrote that the law only allows the money to be used for building new physical barriers, like walls, fences, or buoys.
After the decision, Attorney General Ken Paxton said that Biden was wrong not to use the money Congress gave for building the wall and instead try to use it for other things. He claimed that Biden’s actions show he wants open borders no matter what.
The Biden administration has had mixed policies on building the border wall. At first, they tried to stop construction using the Endangered Species Act. In 2022, they suggested protecting 691 acres in two Texas counties to help a rare wildflower. In 2023, they claimed they wanted to preserve freshwater mussels in three Texas counties.
However, in October 2023, Mayorkas changed his approach. They ignored 26 federal laws to finish a part of the border wall in the Rio Grande Valley, an area where construction had been stopped over two years earlier.
He was forced to act. By early August of that year, Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley had caught over 245,000 people illegally crossing the border.
Tipton points out that this case differs from most because the challenge is against a memo from Mayorkas, not a formal agency rule. He explains that Mayorkas could fix the problem by rescinding the memo. However, removing the memo wouldn’t stop DHS from repeating the same mistakes again, so Tipton decided to issue a permanent order to prevent that. His order offers better protection and keeps the parts of the plan that are not being challenged.
He also dismissed any other claims from the Biden administration.
And it appears the Biden administration has given up the battle. There are plenty of other less hostile places for them to continue to pull illegals into the country. Texas is no longer worth the fight.
