The Biden administration has not sued. It did win a Supreme Court ruling that it could take down the razor wire that Texas has deployed in Shelby Park and elsewhere, which the administration said has led to drowning deaths among migrants. It has now cut razor wire in some sections of the border, but not in Shelby Park, which it can’t access.
Three Biden administration officials said the Supreme Court’s recent razor wire ruling was a win in federal government’s fight with Texas over Shelby Park, but they concede it does not explicitly give control of the area back to Border Patrol.
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The three Biden administration officials told NBC News they do not want a confrontation between Border Patrol and Texas National Guard, but they still consider legal action a tool they might deploy. Shortly after Texas started blocking the Border Patrol from accessing Shelby Park, a mother and two children drowned while crossing the Rio Grande. The officials say they might have been saved if Border Patrol had been able to operate its equipment to surveil the river and respond to migrants in distress.
For now, however, optics mean the administration is holding fire, said a former Department of Homeland Security official. The official said that between the fight to pass a border bill, defend Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in an impeachment fight, and other lawsuits challenging Texas, taking on the Republican-led state would ignite another fire at a time when the administration wants to appear tougher on border security.
Why rush? The Administration knows the law is on their side, and will be whether or not Texas escalates what they are doing. Texas knows this as well, which is why I doubt they will do any huge escalation. Their big headline-grabbing letter quoted the minority opinion in the Supreme Court, and everyone who matters knew that when they read it. Minority = losing. I think they were so loud precisely because they know they are on the wrong side of the legal argument, and want to make noise for their base to react to.
Why should the Administration amplify that by making even more noise? They want to amplify the notion that Republicans in Congress are in disarray and can’t agree to do anything productive at all. Pulling the trigger on a lawsuit (or on federalizing troops there) will just serve to give the “five families” in Congress something to rally around.
The losers here are the migrants, of course, but they are already in a losing position. Lots of people are trying to turn this into another Ruby Bridges moment, but there’s a world of difference between asking for rights for US citizens of color vs. asking for rights for non-US citizens who are in the active process of breaking the law.
It is not illegal to seek asylum at the US border. Refugees are not “illegals”.
It’s complicated. It is illegal to cross the Southern border at any random point that is not an official point of entry. International law recognizes rhe right of asylum, but “international law” is not binding here at all unless we choose to make it so. Migrants could go to a port of entry and claim asylum in a more legally binding manner but as far as I can tell they are far less likely to be let in there than if they make it to US soil through some other place.
When someone is apprehended crossing the border illegally and claims asylum, they are entitled to a hearing, but that system is so backed up that the hearing could take years. So where do they stay in the meantime? Prior to the Trump administration, they stayed here, in a quasi-legal status. Trump started forcing them to wait in Mexico.
So do these migrants who cross the border outside of official points of entry get to be legal simply by saying “asylum” to a CBP officer while on US soil?
Domestic US law recognizes that right of asylum. Don’t need to bring up any international law.
We have weaponized our incompetence against these people. We’re so bad at managing the border that we are unable to process them in a fair, safe, and orderly fashion. We’re unable to even follow our own laws and offer the due process our Constitution requires.
The expectation should be that the asylum-seekers do not know the process. Do not know the proper rules. Are desperate and maybe even afraid and just doing their best under life and death (i.e. coercive) circumstances. As the ones who defined that process, it is our job to catch and guide them through it. It is our job to give them their due process. There should be no presumption of their criminal intent. That should have to be proven in a court of law.
It’s definitely complicated. Feeding into the right-wing rhetoric about the “illegals” is a way to simplify and thought-kill that complexity.
You also understand, though, that current US law states that you need to enter at a designated point of entry. And entering at other points is illegal.
I’ll ask again, does a migrant entering somewhere else and simply invoking “asylum” make their entry legal? Because that seems to be the crux of all of this. I contend that it doesn’t magically make their entry legal, but does entitle them to a hearing, which gives them more rights than if they had simply snuck across and not said the magic word.
I’m not presuming any criminal intent other than the technicality of having to break ort laws, as written, to hane any success with claiming asylum in the first place. When we establish laws that must be broken in order for justice to be done, the laws need fixing.
The whole business is absurd. Republicans don’t want to fix it at all, because they want to campaign on it. But we do ourselves no favors by pretending the current system, based on magic words, is good for anyone.
I feel like my last reply addressed that, but since you are asking directly I’ll be explicit. It does not make their entry legal. Their entry was already legal.
That’s what I mean when I say it is up to us to guide them through the complex process we’ve set up – they are seeking asylum which is a status we recognize. They might not know the proper legal incantations or arcane procedures for that, but they aren’t the ones who invented those legal incantations and arcane procedures. They are refugees doing their best. They should be treated as innocent until proven guilty.
It is not illegal to, while acting in good faith, get lost in the bureaucracy, ESPECIALLY when that bureaucracy is designed from the ground up to be unmanageable in order to disparage your right, ESPECIALLY when your own personal circumstances leave your life at risk.
Sure, you can point towards people who clearly knew that particular point of crossing was not legal. And I will point to people who already had their proper rights disparaged without due process based on how much of a failure the “legal” crossing was.
If you’re only using these words like “illegal” in a 100% legalistic framework, where we care about the letter of the statutes and not the actual rights and people the statutes assert and protect… stop. Don’t do that. That’s harmful.