Texas wins injunction against border wire cutting

The State of Texas won a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) against the federal government after Border Patrol agents repeatedly cut razor wire that Texas authorities had strung. The Border Patrol has, several times, cut that wire to admit illegal migrants. That the judge granted the TRO indicates her belief that Texas will succeed on the merits.

State of the Texas war against illegal migrants

Judge Alia Murphy of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas granted the TRO on October 30. In her eleven-page order she noted that the wire cutting activity, known since July, accelerated beginning September 20. Texas has established ownership of the wire itself, and the consent of private landowners to have the wire in place. They also established that Border Patrol agents cut the wire (or lifted it up, stakes and all) and left gaps in it. Finally, the federal agents did not have permission from the State so to act. Therefore the wire cutting constitutes “trespass to chattels,” a claim the court finds likely to succeed.

The court also found “irreparable harm” to Texas, because the Border Patrol damaged the wire barrier and could then, under “sovereign immunity,” refuse to pay for it. Finally, maintaining the border is in the public interest, because the federal government is not doing its job to secure the border.

Judge Moses’ order expires on November 13. But she has scheduled a hearing for November 7 on a preliminary injunction that could have greater force.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security on October 24, 2023. The thirty-three page complaint listed all the harms from illegal immigration, Texas’ attempts to stop it, and federal interference. State of Texas v. U.S. Dept. Home. Sec., 2:23-cv-00055-AM.)

A related border case

This case has nothing to do with the separate case of U.S. v. Abbott ((1:23-cv-00853-DAE), before Judge David A. Ezra. The Biden administration filed that lawsuit after Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas) ordered the stringing of riparian ballards (a type of buoy), interspersed with metal disks with serrated edges and equipped with hanging nets, along the centerline of the Rio Grande to stop people from crossing that way. (Both the ballards and the razor wire are at or near Eagle Pass, Texas, where the river is unnavigable anyway.) On September 6, Judge Ezra granted a preliminary injunction stopping the State from stringing the ballards, so Texas appealed. The next day the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals granted an administrative stay – until further order from the Fifth Circuit. This was the unanimous decision of the three-judge panel now hearing the appeal. The three judges heard oral argument on October 5 and have made no ruling since.