A dispute between the White House and Texas intensified on Monday after the Biden administration declared that state officials acted unconstitutionally by blocking federal agents from a section of the border where a migrant mother and two children drowned in the Rio Grande.
The Texas military department (TMD) fenced off a large public park at Eagle Pass last week on the orders of the Republican governor, Greg Abbott, who boasted on Friday “we are not allowing border patrol on that property any more”.
The Mexican woman, her eight-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son, drowned near Shelby park later the same day. Border agents, believing they were still alive, were “physically barred” by Texas authorities from entering the park and trying to reach them, the homeland security department said.
“Texas’s failure to provide access to the border persists even in instances of imminent danger to life and safety,” Jonathan Meyer, the department’s general counsel, wrote to the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, in a letter, first reported by CNN.
“Texas has demonstrated that even in the most exigent circumstances, it will not allow Border Patrol access to the border to conduct law enforcement and emergency response activities.”
Meyer said the state’s actions were unconstitutional, and had “impeded operations”, and he threatened more legal action against Texas if access was not restored by Wednesday.
Officials in Texas, meanwhile, challenged the government’s version of events as “wholly inaccurate”.
“At the time that Border Patrol requested access, the drownings had occurred, Mexican authorities were recovering the bodies, and Border Patrol expressed these facts to the TMD personnel on site,” the department said in a statement on Sunday night.
The finger-pointing over the deaths represent a significant escalation of Abbott’s feud with the Biden administration over immigration enforcement, which the supreme court has consistently ruled comes under the jurisdiction of the federal government.
Abbott’s hardline approach included the launch of his own set of immigration policies and strategies under the banner Operation Lone Star three years ago.
Since then, the governor has attracted headlines for bussing and flying immigrants to Democratic-led cities and states, ordering thousands of state troopers and armed national guard members to “assist” in enforcement at the border, and turning the Rio Grande into a “battlefield” by deploying a floating wall of razor wire, shipping containers and buoys with netting to trap or deter migrants trying to reach the US from Mexico.
Deaths by drowning, especially near the popular Eagle Pass crossing point, which is not a legal point of entry, have become commonplace. The city’s fire chief estimated that about 30 bodies per month have been removed from the river each month since March of last year.
On Sunday, the Democratic Texas congressman Henry Cuellar accepted that state officials had responded to a distress call and searched for the people in question, but in a statement said he believed Abbott’s policies had led to the deaths.
“The bottom line is that border patrol was barred from entering Shelby Park. This is a tragedy, and the state bears responsibility,” said Cuellar, ranking member of the House appropriations subcommittee on homeland security.
His criticism was echoed by Luis Miranda, a homeland security department spokesperson, who said federal agents went to the park on Friday night after learning of the distress call, but were “physically barred” by TMD personnel from gaining entry.
“The Texas governor’s policies are cruel, dangerous, and inhumane, and Texas’s blatant disregard for federal authority over immigration poses grave risks,” Miranda said in a statement.
“The state of Texas should stop interfering with the US Border Patrol’s enforcement of US law.”
Abbott was applauded at a campaign stop for a state legislator in Houston on Friday, before the deaths of the migrants, for fencing off the park and stating federal agents could no longer have access.
“We said, ‘We’ve had it.’ We’re not going to let this happen any more,” Abbott said.
The 50-acre park is owned by the city of Eagle Pass but used by the state authorities to patrol border crossings. The city’s mayor, Rolando Salinas, has said he was given no notice of the closure and questioned why it was necessary, as detentions of migrants in the area had fallen in recent weeks.
The justice department complained to the supreme court on Friday that Texas seized control of the park and were refusing to let border patrol agents in. In response, Texas said the federal government had mischaracterized its action and that the state was attempting to resolve the access issue.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting
