Texas has won another lawsuit against the Biden administration, this time one that requires it to finish building the border wall.
The ruling was issued May 29, with a 60-day window for appeal. Because the Biden administration didn’t appeal by July 29, the court’s order remains in full effect.
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The Fifth Circuit ruled Tuesday that Texas will be able to continue using its floating barriers in the Rio Grande river in order to deter illegal immigrant crossings.
Last June Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced the installment of the floating line of buoys as he signed a series of border security bills, giving the state $5.1 billion in funding as it continues to be at the epicenter of the border crisis.
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It’s no secret that the government’s monopoly on education is in trouble. Across the country, public schools are emptying while parental choice is flourishing. Florida, perhaps the national leader in this movement, has four different private school choice programs: one education savings account (ESA), one voucher program, and two tax-credit scholarships.
One of the results of Florida’s success is that many of the state’s public schools are shutting down. Florida’s Broward County, the sixth largest school district in the country, housing some 320 K-12 schools, could see 42 of them shut down, including 32 elementary schools, eight middle schools, and two high schools.
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Calling the Biden administration’s recent decision to include gender identity in Title IX “election-year pandering” and a threat to women — and the “truth” — Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed an executive order telling schools in her state to ignore the guidance.
“The educational institutions of Arkansas will continue to enforce state law guaranteeing the right of students to maintain their privacy. Students must not be forced to shower or undress with members of the opposite sex,” states the executive order, signed Thursday by the Republican governor.
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Oklahoma’s Republican governor signed a sweeping immigration enforcement bill into law, making the Sooner State the latest to confront the border crisis through legislative action.
Gov. Kevin Stitt signed House Bill 4156 into law on Tuesday, one week after the Republican-controlled legislature sent it to his desk. The law, which is set to take effect on July 1, makes it illegal to reside in Oklahoma without legal authorization to be in the U.S.
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The majority of American voters polled believe the U.S. is being invaded at the southern border.
The findings come after Texas counties have led the national conversation on invasion, introducing the term and making the case for Texas’ constitutional right to self-defense.
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Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday reiterated the right of the state of Texas to defend itself amid an unprecedented surge in illegal border crossings, insisting that the Biden administration had failed in its duties and forced Austin’s hand.
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A new Supreme Court filing by the Department of Justice (DOJ) raises new questions that could help exonerate the Texas Military Department after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) English) accuse the state agency of allowing the deaths of three migrants who drowned in Shelby Park last week.
Both the White House and Biden’s Department of Homeland Security blamed state officials after three migrants, including two children, drowned in the Shelby Park area.
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Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday signed a measure to make illegal entry into the Lone Star State a state crime, giving state law enforcement a potentially pivotal tool to combat illegal immigration on its own amid perceived federal apathy.
The law, which is slated to take effect in March, would empower Texas law enforcement to arrest illegal entrants and grant judges the ability to order their deportation, CNN reported.
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Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas sent a letter Monday to President Joe Biden, formally responding to threats of legal action from the Department of Justice (DOJ) over his states floating buoy barrier installed in the Rio Grande River.
Abbott defended his authority to have the floating buoy barrier built, accusing Biden of flouting U.S. immigration law with his border policies and violating the constitutional rights of states to protect themselves from an “invasion,” the letter read. The DOJ sent a letter Thursday to Abbott, accusing him of breaking the law, according to CNN.
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Texas has a right to defend its own border, Gov. Greg Abbott said on Friday in response to the U.S. Department of Justice demanding the state remove marine barriers placed in the Rio Grande River in the Eagle Pass area of Texas.
“The State of Texas’s actions violate federal law, raise humanitarian concerns, present serious risks to public safety and the environment, and may interfere with the federal government’s ability to carry out its official duties,” the DOJ wrote to Abbott in a letter on Thursday. The DOJ gave Abbott until Monday to agree to remove the barriers. If he didn’t agree or reply, the DOJ said it would sue.
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Since Texas’ border security mission Operation Lone Star (OLS) launched more than two years ago, the multi-agency effort has led to the apprehension of nearly 400,000 foreign nationals who entered the U.S. illegally.
Since last April, Texas has sent over 500 buses of foreign nationals to six so-called sanctuary cities.
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Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday signed two bills into law designed to reform public higher education institutions in Texas. One bans them from implementing DEI policies and another revises the tenure structure.
Both bills, authored by Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, passed the legislature during the regular legislative session. Senate Bill 17 bans public colleges and universities from implementing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies that prioritize gender, race, ethnicity and ideological beliefs as factors for hiring or admission policies. Earlier this year, Gov. Abbott’s chief of staff sent a letter to public higher education institutions and state agencies saying if they were implementing DEI policies, they were violating federal law. In response, the heads of Texas colleges and universities said they were “pausing” and reviewing their DEI policies. The new law requires them to terminate them.
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A bus of foreign nationals who illegally entered Texas and were apprehended and released by the Biden administration were taken to Los Angeles for the first time, Gov. Greg Abbott said. They were dropped off at the Los Angeles Union Station Wednesday evening.
“Texas’ small border towns remain overwhelmed and overrun by the thousands of people illegally crossing into Texas from Mexico because of President Biden’s refusal to secure the border,” Abbott said. “Los Angeles is a major city that migrants seek to go to, particularly now that its city leaders approved its self-declared sanctuary city status. Our border communities are on the frontlines of President Biden’s border crisis, and Texas will continue providing this much-needed relief until he steps up to do his job and secure the border.”
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Gov. Greg Abbott says his goal is to eliminate homeowners’ property taxes in the state of Texas. He says it’s possible to achieve over time because of the significant economic growth of the state.
All three Republican leaders, Abbott, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick and Speaker Dade Phelan, have pledged to reduce property taxes and made it a legislative priority.
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President Joe Biden on Sunday landed in the border town of El Paso, Texas, and his visit is being criticized as “too late” and a “propaganda event,” as record numbers of illegal migrants have entered the United States since he entered office.
“Biden’s promise to secure the border is too little, and two years late. Irreversible damage has been done,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) tweeted. “Over 313,000 illegal aliens flooded the border last month. 5.3M illegal aliens since Biden took office.”
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Frustrated by an unending crisis fueled by drug and human trafficking at the southern border, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday declared his state was under an invasion and invoked special powers granted under the U.S. and Texas constitutions.
Abbott’s decision came after three dozen counties in his state passed resolutions calling for the dramatic action. The Republican governor said the declaration allows him to send National Guard troops to the border, treat drug cartels as terrorist organization and to build his own border wall separate of the federal government.
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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday issued an executive order officially designating certain Mexican drug cartels as foreign smuggled into the U.S. to kill Americans at an alarming rate.
In one year’s time, fentanyl killed nearly 20 times more people than those killed in terrorist attacks over decades.
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An additional $30 million in Operation Lone Star (OLS) grant money is available to Texas cities and counties to enhance border security operations, the governor’s Public Safety Office (PSO) announced.
The announcement came two days after six county judges and sheriffs asked the governor to declare an invasion at the southern border, and to do more to help them thwart illegal activity in their counties after experiencing a surge of drug and human smuggling and other criminal activity resulting from the Biden administration’s border policies.
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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says he may challenge a longstanding Supreme Court decision that states U.S. states cannot prohibit illegal immigrant children from attending public schools.
The Republican governor said during a recent radio interview on a San Antonio talk show that he was mulling the action and agreed with the host of the program that the price of educating an expanding group of illegal immigrant children in many languages is “extraordinary.”
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Truckers working between Texas and Mexico have been blocking two busy bridges at the southern U.S. border, amid rising tensions over an order by the office of Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott for tighter safety inspections that also have purportedly slowed traffic.
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District attorneys for five of the largest counties in Texas are defying Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order to treat sex change surgeries for children as child abuse.
Abbott ordered the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (TDFPS) Tuesday to investigate instances of children undergoing sex change procedures, including “reassignment surgeries that can cause sterilization, mastectomies, removals of otherwise healthy body parts, and administration of puberty-blocking drugs or supraphysiologic doses of testosterone or estrogen.”
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On Thursday, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy (R-Alaska) announced that his state would be joining a lawsuit, originally filed earlier this month by Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R-Texas), against the Biden Administration for its mandate requiring vaccinations for all members of the National Guard.
Fox News reports that the lawsuit seeks to challenge the constitutionality of Biden’s mandate by claiming that it violates the sovereignty of the states and the state governors over their control of their respective National Guard units.
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Since March 2021, when Gov. Greg Abbott launched Operation Lone Star (OLS), Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) state troopers have been working around the clock to help defend the southern border. Nine months later, its chief reports a record for state interdiction efforts.
Since OLS began, state troopers have arrested more than 10,000 illegal immigrants, including smugglers and drug traffickers, Texas DPS Director Steve McCraw said Wednesday at a Texas Public Policy Foundation event in Austin. They’ve seized over 5 tons of methamphetamine, over $17 million in cash, and enough fentanyl to kill over 260 million people.
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A federal judge has blocked COVID-19 mask and vaccine mandates in Texas’ schools Head Start program, a decision that GOP Gov. Greg Abbott is calling a win over “Biden again.”
“Texas just beat Biden again,” Abbott, a staunch opponent of such mandates, tweeted after the ruling Friday by Judge James “Wesley” Hendrix, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
Hendrix, a Trump administration appointee, wrote in the ruling: “The Court concludes that the circumstances do not justify or require a nationwide injunction,” according to KLBK Lubbock. “The great majority of evidence before the Court is limited to harm caused to Head Start programs in Texas.”
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An additional $38.4 million of Texas taxpayer money has been allocated to fund border security efforts at the Texas-Mexico border. It’s money Texas shouldn’t have to spend, Gov. Greg Abbott said, but is because of President Joe Biden’s open border policies that have ushered into the state rampant trafficking of drugs, people and crime.
The money will provide additional funding for Operation Lone Star, which Abbott launched in March and go towards law enforcement, jail operations, and court administration costs. It brings the total PSO funding for Operation Lone Star to $74 million to date designed to assist border cities and counties.
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RIO GRANDE VALLEY — A top official within Texas’ effort to secure the U.S.-Mexico border told the Daily Caller News Foundation that his troops are prepared for a worst case scenario situation and that they can be deployed within hours to tackle it.
“We’re prepared to repel and block any sized element coming across,” The Texas National Guard border public affairs officer Major Mike Perry told the DCNF. “That’s what the rehearsals are for. Typically, they’re focused on one area cause it’s your low crossings and your ports. So, we can be anywhere with our ground assets in three hours to get the Steel Curtain up and prepare for it, and, of course, you saw the Contingency Reaction Force fly in with the military police.”
The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and the Texas National Guard are prepared to “surge” resources to any location in Texas to “repel and block” large caravans or other illegal activity crossing the border, Perry explained.
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Texas law enforcement officials have made more than 8,520 criminal arrests of illegal migrants since Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott launched Operation Lone Star in March, a Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Wednesday.
Around 1,600 of the arrests were for criminal trespassing and about 6,800 felony charges were filed against illegal migrants from the time Abbott’s directive was issued through Oct. 28, Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Press Secretary Ericka Miller told the DCNF.
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U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, introduced legislation that would prohibit the federal government and any entity at the federal, state and local level that receives federal funding, including school districts, from requiring COVID-19 vaccines for minors.
“Parents should have the right to decide what is best for their children in consultation with their family doctor,” he said. “My view on the COVID-19 vaccine has remained clear: no mandates of any kind.
“President [Joe] Biden and his administration have repeatedly ignored medical privacy rights and personal liberty by pushing unlawful and burdensome vaccine mandates on American businesses, and now they are preparing to push a mandate on kids by pressuring parents – all without taking into account relative risk or the benefits of natural immunity.”
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Texas Republicans described President Joe Biden’s immigration policies as reckless and criticized him for claiming that he has been too busy to visit the southern border since taking office in January.
Biden said Thursday night that he “should go down [to visit the border] but the whole point of it is I haven’t had a whole hell of a lot of time to,” during a CNN town hall. The last time Biden was near the border was when he flew into an airport in El Paso, Texas, where his motorcade took him to New Mexico for a campaign event in 2008, according to The Washington Post.
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Major tech companies are continuing to require their employees to be vaccinated at their Texas facilities, in violation of Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order banning all vaccine mandates.
Abbott signed an executive order on Oct. 11 prohibiting “any entity,” including private businesses, government contractors and local schools, from imposing a requirement that employees be vaccinated as a condition of employment. However, Google, Facebook, HPE, Twitter and Lyft have yet to lift their vaccine mandates in response to the order, Protocol first reported.
HPE spokesman Adam Bauer confirmed the company had not changed its vaccine policy, and told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the company was making “vaccination a condition of employment for U.S. team members to comply with President Biden’s executive order and remain in good standing as a federal contractor.”
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Texas Republicans advanced new congressional maps late Monday over the objections of Democrats who argued that the process was rushed and that the new districts unfairly grouped people of color.
The new map shores up Republican incumbents, several of whom won in 2020 by slim margins, but some opponents of the map say that it dilutes the representation of minority communities.
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The Biden-Harris administration has lost track of at least 45,000 unaccompanied minors who were brought across the southern border illegally — and President Joe Biden has yet to issue a statement about it.
So far this year, unaccompanied minors arriving at the border have hit record numbers. In June, there were 15,234 encounters with unaccompanied children, in July, 18,958 encounters, and in August, there were 18,847 encounters, according to Customs and Border Patrol data.
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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order late Monday prohibiting all COVID-19 vaccine mandates in the state of Texas.
“The COVID-19 vaccine is safe, effective, and our best defense against the virus, but should always remain voluntary and never forced,” Abbott said in a tweet announcing the executive order.
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Allen West, the former chair of the Texas Republican Party who is primarying Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, is hospitalized with COVID-19 but said Sunday that he was “doing great.”
Allen West told the Associated Press that he had “no complaints” and was “just relaxing” in a hospital in Plano, Texas. West said on Twitter that both he and his wife, Angela, were hospitalized with the virus and that they underwent monoclonal antibody infusion therapy.
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Tens of thousands of migrants from other countries are making their way north to the southern border, an open border activist and government officials warn.
Irineo Mujica, Director of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, an NGO that provides “shelter and safety to migrants and refugees in transit” and accompanies them “in their journey,” says a new Haitian caravan is making its way to the U.S. border from Tapachula, Mexico.
He also says 800 Haitians and Central Americans are crossing the Guatemalan border every day making their way north.
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Nine Republican governors are joining Govs. Greg Abbott of Texas and Doug Ducey of Arizona in Mission, Texas, Wednesday to discuss the ongoing border crisis and President Joe Biden’s immigration policies.
Ducey and Abbott will be joined by Govs. Brian Kemp of Georgia, Brad Little of Idaho, Kim Reynolds of Iowa, Greg Gianforte of Montana, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, Kristi Noem of South Dakota and Mark Gordon of Wyoming.
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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he would hire any Border Patrol agent fired by the Biden administration after White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said agents would no longer be permitted to use horses to guard the border in Del Rio, Texas.
Criticism of mounted agents was widespread after a photograph showing agents using horse reins was misconstrued by members of the media and some politicians suggesting the agent was using the reins as a “whip.”
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Thousands of Haitian migrants overwhelmed border officials in Del Rio, Texas, The New York Times reported on Thursday.
Border officials reportedly said that over 9,000 migrants, mostly from Haiti, were waiting to be processed under the Del Rio International Bridge, according to the Times. A few hundred migrants crossed the shallow section of the Rio Grande River to the temporary site earlier this week, and officials reportedly expect thousands more to show up over the next few days.
More Border Patrol agents will be deployed to the area “to immediately address the current level of migrant encounters and to facilitate a safe, humane and orderly process,” the agency said, the Times reported. Migrants are told to wait under the bridge to get out of the hot Texas sun in an effort to stem heat-related illness before they’re taken into custody.
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Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law Thursday preventing social media companies from banning users for their political views.
The law, known as HB 20, prohibits social media platforms from banning or suspending users, and removing or suppressing their content, based on political viewpoint. The bill was introduced by state Sen. Bryan Hughes partly in an effort to combat perceived censorship of conservatives by Facebook, Twitter, Google-owned YouTube, and other major tech companies.
“Social media websites have become our modern-day public square,” Abbott said in a statement. “They are a place for healthy public debate where information should be able to flow freely — but there is a dangerous movement by social media companies to silence conservative viewpoints and ideas.”
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Gov. Greg Abbott Tuesday signed Texas’ election reform bill into law, ending a months-long political fight over the controversial legislation.
Abbott, a Republican, traveled to Tyler, Texas to sign the Senate Bill 1, which repeals many of the voting measures that large cities in the state implemented amid the pandemic and overhauls the state’s mail-in voting and polling place systems.
Senate Bill 1 also bars election officials from sending voters unsolicited mail-in ballot applications to voters, threatening jail time if they do so.
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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday banned government-issued vaccine mandates despite the Food and Drug Administration’s recent approval of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine.
Abbott’s executive order applies to all government-run entities with the exception of nursing homes and assisted living facilities. “Vaccine requirements and exemptions have historically been determined by the legislature, and their involvement is particularly important to avoid a patchwork of vaccine mandates across Texas,” Abbott said in an accompanying statement.
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Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott has tested positive for COVID-19, his office announced Tuesday.
“Governor Greg Abbott today tested positive for the COVID-19 virus. The governor has been testing daily, and today was the first positive test result,” said Office of the Governor Communications Director Mark Miner.
“Governor Abbott is in constant communication with his staff, agency heads, and government officials to ensure that state government continues to operate smoothly and efficiently. The Governor will isolate in the Governor’s Mansion and continue to test daily. Governor Abbott is receiving Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody treatment,” the statement continued.
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The Texas House of Representatives voted 89-12 on Tuesday evening to authorize state law enforcement to corral and potentially arrest AWOL Democratic members who fled Austin to stop passage of election integrity legislation.
The vote allowed the House sergeant-at-arms to send law enforcement officers to force the attendance of missing Democrats “under warrant of arrest, if necessary.”
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Gov. Greg Abbott asked the state’s Department of Family Protective Services (DFPS) Friday to say whether transgender surgeries for children constitutes child abuse.
The Texas Republican called on Jaime Masters, commissioner of the DFPS, to make a determination of whether “genital mutilation of a child for purposes of gender transitioning through reassignment surgery constitutes child abuse” in a Friday letter.
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Texas Republican Congressman Chip Roy is calling for the impeachment of President Joe Biden and the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, citing their “reckless immigration policy” that many lawmakers argue is endangering the lives of Texans and Americans.
“Total encounters: 205,029. Total known getaways: 37,400. 1.3 million for 2021 so far. Largest monthly encounter number since 2000,” Roy tweeted.
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Alegal battle and war of words between Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the federal government over COVID-positive migrants being released into Texas communities escalated over the weekend.
The U.S. Department of Justice sued the state of Texas Friday over an executive order Abbott issued restricting the transport of infected immigrants who entered the country illegally being released into the general population.
“The Biden Administration is knowingly admitting hundreds of thousands of unauthorized migrants, many of whom the federal government knows full well have COVID-19,” Abbott said in response to the lawsuit.
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A legal battle and war of words between Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the federal government over COVID-positive migrants being released into Texas communities escalated over the weekend.
The U.S. Department of Justice sued the state of Texas Friday over an executive order Abbott issued restricting the transport of infected immigrants who entered the country illegally being released into the general population.
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The Texas border city of Laredo has sued the Biden administration, hoping to halt its policy of transferring several hundred people a day into the city who have illegally entered the U.S. through two Texas Border Patrol sectors: Rio Grande Valley and Del Rio.
Assistant City Attorney Alyssa Castillon sued the Department of Homeland Security and its secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, Customs and Border Protection and its senior official, Troy Miller, and Border Patrol chief Rodney S. Scott. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
Border Patrol intends to double the number of people it brings from the Rio Grande Valley sector, which has seen the largest surge of illegal border crossings in the past few months. Laredo officials estimate that every day, between three and six buses of detained refugees, immigrants and migrants (RIMs) are already being transported to Laredo from the Rio Grande Valley and Del Rio sectors, totaling between 250 and 350 people a day.
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The Biden Justice Department on Friday sued Texas and Gov. Greg Abbott seeking to overturn an executive order prohibiting the ground transportation of illegal aliens who could be carrying COVID-19.
Attorney General Merrick Garland’s team argued in U.S. District Court that Abbott’s order interferes with the federal government’s ability to address immigration.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he would contest the order and “keep President Biden out of Texas business.”
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