IRLI Asks Supreme Court to Keep Texas’s Border Barriers Up

January 11, 2024

Shows state razor wire is doing the job Biden won’t do

WASHINGTON—The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) has filed a brief with the Supreme Court opposing an emergency application of the Biden Administration to vacate an injunction the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has issued to prevent border patrol from cutting Texas’s razor-wire border barriers while that appellate court considers Texas’s lawsuit to stop this federal trespass on its property.

The administration claims that the barriers are preempted under the Supremacy Clause because they interfere with border patrol’s efforts to let illegal aliens in. IRLI points out, however, that mere executive policies—especially ones, such as these, that violate federal law—have no preemptive force.

IRLI also shows that Texas, as a sovereign state, has the inherent authority to protect its territory in a way congruent with federal law. And the barriers here are not inconsistent with federal law, but rather are an effective means of advancing Congress’s purpose, in that law, of stopping illegal immigration.

“Preposterously, the Biden Administration is arguing that, because it refuses to enforce the law, that same law preempts the state’s ‘interference’ with that nonenforcement,” said Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of IRLI. “It doesn’t work that way. States have a right to defend their borders, and to pursue objectives of Congress—such as stopping illegal immigration—even when the executive branch has subverted them. We hope the Court sees this clearly, and keeps the injunction and the razor wire in place.”

The case is Department of Homeland Security v. Texas, No. 23A607 (Supreme Court).