A federal appeals court granted Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) a legal victory against President Joe Biden‘s immigration strategy on Wednesday.
Abbott announced that in a 2-1 ruling, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked Biden officials from removing razor wire set up on the U.S.-Mexico border that state officials had installed in Eagle Pass, Texas.
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“BREAKING: the federal court of appeals just ruled that Texas has the right to build the razor wire border wall that we have constructed to deny illegal entry into our state.and that Biden was wrong to cut our razor wire,” he wrote on X. “We continue adding more razor wire border barrier.”
“HUGE WIN FOR TEXAS,” the state’s Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote on X. “The Biden Administration has been enjoined from damaging, destroying, or otherwise interfering with Texas’s border fencing.”
The victory for Abbott comes amid his feud with the Biden administration as the Lone Star State continued to install razor wire along its border with Mexico over the past year.
The razor wire is meant to deter illegal immigration into Texas. However, Justice Department officials argued that it injured migrants and interfered with the U.S. government’s ability to patrol the border.
The decision this week comes after a 5-4 Supreme Court emergency decision from January granting the Biden administration’s request to vacate a lower court injunction on the razor wire dispute and continue cutting the wire.
The Justice Department asked the high court to intervene after the 5th Circuit blocked a lower court order in December 2023 that gave Border Patrol agents the green light to cut concertina wire that Texas military had put in place along the banks of the Rio Grande to prevent immigrants from walking into the United States.
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But even after the Supreme Court ruling, Texas National Guard soldiers installed more wire in Eagle Pass, escalating the battle with the Biden administration.
“The Texas National Guard continues to hold the line in Eagle Pass,” Texas’s governor said in an X post at the time. “Texas will not back down from our efforts to secure the border in Biden’s absence.”
The fight over the razor wire began in 2021 as Abbott launched the state’s Operation Lone Star to secure the border.
The Texas Military Department placed roughly 70,000 rolls of wire into different parts of the Texas-Mexico border to deter immigrants from crossing.
Texas filed a lawsuit against the federal government in the fall of 2023, alleging that border officials cutting the fire were interfering with the state’s right to secure the border.
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As President-elect Donald Trump steps into office for a second time on Jan. 20, Abbott will have a key ally backing up his actions to secure his state’s border with Mexico. Trump has long promised mass deportations beginning as soon as he takes office.