Biden’s DOJ Sides with Mexico and Mass Illegal Migration Against Texas and Border Security

Exasperated at the Biden administration’s continuing refusal to do its legally-mandated job and secure our borders, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas announced the creation of a 1,000-foot-long floating barrier on the Rio Grande River in June, as a part of Operation Lone Star. Earlier this month, Texas began deploying the barrier, which is anchored to the river bed and made up of buoys connected to one another. These are designed to spin when illegal border crossers attempt to swim across the river. Not surprisingly, Mexico – whose policy has for decades been to enable mass illegal migration into the U.S. as a social safety valve – is not happy and issued a diplomatic note complaining about the floating barrier. Rather than come to Texas’ defense, the most open-borders, pro-illegal-migration administration in U.S. history has sided with Mexico, demanding that the floating buoy chain be removed.

In its note, Mexico has alleged that Texas’ buoy chain violates the International Waters Treaty of 1944 and the Boundary Treaty of 1970, essentially arguing that it will interfere with the river’s navigability and the flow of water. The claims prompted David North from the Center for Immigration Studies to write that Mexico’s arguments “almost defy belief.” That’s because “[t]he barrier is in the middle of the stream, not cross-wise of it. And it floats! How can anything that runs parallel to the river and floats in it have anything to do with the flow of the water?” The claim that the buoy barrier would negatively impact navigability is also questionable. Whether Mexico has a legal case here is unclear, but what is quite clear is that Mexico City is using the 1944 and 1970 treaties as pretexts to keep the migrant flow unobstructed.

Of course, the “problem” Mexico is complaining about would not exist in the first place if Mexico’s policy were not based on inducing its own citizens to illegally migrate to the U.S. and willingly serving as a launching pad for the illegal migration of huge numbers of non-Mexican nationals into our country. This same policy has made the Rio Grande buoy barrier necessary. In essence, Mexico is asking us to unilaterally take down one of the few vestiges of border security we have left without offering any help in reducing mass illegal migration in return.

Not that long ago, such a brazen demand by a foreign government would have been immediately rebuffed. When it came to U.S. sovereignty and borders, the tradition was that, in spite of political or partisan differences, “politics ends at the water’s edge.” Unfortunately, the Biden administration does not believe in that time-honored maxim. Instead, it has taken the same anti-enforcement position as Mexico, both to spite a political adversary (Gov. Abbott) and, even more importantly, to continue the pro-mass-migration agenda.

The position of the Biden Department of Justice is expressed in a complaint. In it, the administration alleges that Texas has violated the Rivers and Harbors Act by building “structures” that “constitute an unauthorized obstruction to the navigable capacity of waters of the United States” without seeking a green light from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The DOJ thus demanded that Texas remove the floating barrier.

Gov. Abbott responded in a July 24 letter to President Biden, refusing to remove the buoy chain and telling him, “Texas will see you in court, Mr. President.” He explained his legal rationale, citing both the U.S. and Texas state constitutions. “Your ongoing violation of Article IV, § 4 of the U.S. Constitution,” which obligates the federal government to protect each state against invasion, “has left me no other choice,” Abbott told Biden. The Texas governor then emphasizes the big picture by pointing out that “Texas’s action is a side issue. The fact is, if you would just enforce the immigration laws Congress already has on the books, America would not be suffering from your record-breaking level of illegal immigration.” Needless to say, Gov. Abbott’s analysis of the issue is spot-on and the Biden administration should secure our borders rather than undermining Texas’ efforts to do so.