The Justice Department sued the state of Texas on Monday afternoon over the floating barriers the Lone Star State placed in the middle of the Rio Grande to deter migrants from crossing.
The DOJ is seeking an injunction to bar Texas from constructing new floating barriers and order the state to remove the 1,000-foot stretch of buoys that has already been put up near Eagle Pass, Texas. Over the weekend, the Justice sent a letter warning Texas governor Greg Abbott to expeditiously remove the barriers or face legal action.
Abbott responded in a letter addressed to the president: “If you truly care about human life, you must begin enforcing federal immigration laws. . . . In the meantime, Texas will fully utilize its constitutional authority to deal with the crisis you have caused.”
“We will see you in court, Mr. President,” Abbott added.
The DOJ asserts in its filing that Texas did not have authorization from the United States Army Corps of Engineers to put up the floating barriers.
“Because Texas installed the Floating Barrier without seeking the Corps’ authorization, the Corps and other relevant federal agencies were deprived of the opportunity to evaluate risks the barrier poses to public safety and the environment, mitigate those risks as necessary through the permitting process, and otherwise evaluate whether the project is in the public interest,” read the filing.
Justice claims that, in so doing, Texas has violated the Rivers and Harbors Act. Section 10 prohibits the “creation of any obstruction not affirmatively authorized by Congress, to the navigable capacity of any of the waters of the United States.”
According to associate attorney general Vanita Gupta, Texas has flouted federal law, constructing a barrier that poses threats to navigation and presents humanitarian concerns.
“Additionally, the presence of the floating barrier has prompted diplomatic protests by Mexico and risks damaging U.S. foreign policy,” Gupta added.
In his letter, Abbott said: “In accordance with Article I, § 10, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution, I have asserted Texas’s ‘sovereign interest in protecting [her] borders.'”
“Your lawyers’ claim that Texas’s floating marine barriers violate Section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act misses the mark,” argued Abbott. “In that statute, Congress decreed that ‘it shall not be lawful to build . . . any wharf, pier, dolphin, boom, weir, breakwater, bulkhead, jetty, or other structures in any . . . water of the United States.’ . . . To state the obvious, that statute does not describe any action by the State of Texas.”
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas.
When the justice department comes down to Texas and starts taking care of the illegals then they have a right to say something.
ReplyDeleteBut doing nothing does not give them a right to do anything.