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That is The Marshall Undertaking’s Closing Argument e-newsletter, a weekly deep dive right into a key prison justice problem. Need this delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to future newsletters right here.
Late final week, Texas officers abruptly blocked off entry to a public park within the border city of Eagle Cross. Shelby Park, which sits alongside the Rio Grande, had turn into a well-liked web site for migrants making an attempt to cross into the U.S. Towards town’s needs, the transfer has successfully banished federal Border Patrol brokers, who had been utilizing the park as a staging space for receiving asylum seekers earlier than transporting them for additional processing.
The exceptional scene — primarily an armed standoff between the state’s Nationwide Guard and federal brokers — is only one episode in what has been an escalating battle between Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the Biden administration over border safety. Abbott has additionally clashed with the administration over his effort to dam components of the Rio Grande with buoys and razor wire, and over a Texas legislation enacted final month that makes it a state crime to cross into the U.S. illegally.
Quite a few observers have famous that these efforts seemingly violate federal legislation, the Structure, and Supreme Courtroom precedent, all of which broadly delegate immigration enforcement powers to the federal authorities. Abbott responded earlier this month that the federal authorities’s lack of ability or unwillingness to implement federal immigration legislation “creates the opening” for Texas to take action by itself. The area has seen report numbers of border crossings in latest months, primarily by folks from Mexico, Venezuela, and Guatemala.
On Wednesday, the fifth Circuit Courtroom of Appeals granted Texas a brand new listening to over its efforts to bodily block the river, which means that the buoys and concertina wire can wait for now. Litigation on Abbott’s different efforts to tighten the border between Texas and Mexico can also be pending.
In keeping with the Division of Homeland Safety, Texas has denied Border Patrol entry in conditions the place federal brokers tried to supply emergency help to migrants in misery. The division cited the circumstances of three folks, together with two kids, who drowned within the Rio Grande on Jan. 12. Later authorized filings revealed that the deaths occurred earlier than border patrol had requested entry to the world — however that two different migrants experiencing hypothermia needed to be aided by Mexican authorities, since Border Patrol couldn’t achieve entry to the river. Whereas Border Patrol does routinely mount emergency response efforts, it’s price noting that the company additionally has a protracted historical past of abuse, misconduct, and unaccountable violence.
In the end, all these issues are seemingly headed for the U.S. Supreme Courtroom. Writing for Slate, Mark Joseph Stern argues that whereas the case “needs to be one of many best that the Supreme Courtroom has ever confronted,” the court docket’s delay in responding to the Division of Justice’s requests would possibly sign that justices are certainly open to Texas’ method.
One in every of Abbott’s different immigration gambits, bussing migrants to northern cities, additionally continues to play out legally, albeit in lower-stakes circumstances. The Texas-based bus firm Wynne Transportation, which has obtained greater than $75 million from the state to move migrants north over the past yr, is suing town of Chicago over new restrictions that made it unlawful for buses to drop off passengers with out approval. Satirically, Wynne is arguing that town ordinances intrude with interstate commerce, which like border safety, is constitutionally reserved for regulation by the federal authorities.
In New York, Mayor Eric Adams filed a lawsuit in opposition to Wynne and the 16 different bus corporations which have transported greater than 33,000 migrants to town from the border since August of 2022. (Many extra have arrived by means not paid for by Texas.) Adams filed the swimsuit based mostly on an obscure misdemeanor within the state code designed to punish anybody who brings “a needy individual from out of the state into this state for the aim of constructing him a public cost.” The lawsuit is doomed to fail, writes Errol Louis in New York Journal, as a result of legal guidelines of this nature have been struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Courtroom in 1941.
Tons of of 1000’s of migrants have already arrived in main cities like New York, Chicago, Denver and Boston, and most places have struggled to shelter the brand new arrivals. In New York earlier this month, town started evicting some migrant households who’ve spent greater than 60 days in metropolis homeless shelters, directing them to a re-ticketing course of to safe one other place to remain.
Migrants in these cold-weather cities have additionally needed to navigate precarious entry to shelter throughout a blast of winter storms and brutal chilly. Many lack each correct winter garments and any earlier expertise with chilly climate.
In Chicago, officers have resorted to sheltering folks in library basements, parked metropolis buses, police stations, and airports. In Denver, advocates are instructing residents of tent encampments cold-weather survival abilities.
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