On Thursday, President Biden and Donald Trump offered Americans a split-screen view of the border in Texas — Biden in Brownsville, on the Gulf end of the Rio Grande, and Trump upriver in Eagle Pass.
Each location was carefully chosen, Biden from what Texas Gov. Greg Abbott termed a “sanitized location,” and Trump on the border itself, to showcase Texas’ efforts to fill Biden’s enforcement void and do what the administration won’t — secure its border with Mexico.
As Abbott noted after Trump’s remarks, concertina-wire barriers and state personnel, elements of a Texas border effort called Operation Lone Star, have “wired” Brownsville “shut.”
The results are telling.
Apprehensions in that area fell from 30,000-plus in January 2022 to about 15,000 one year later, before falling below 7,500 this January.
Dog that caught the car
Plainly, Biden didn’t want to be shown up by Texas’ barriers and troopers.
The tip of the Lone Star spear is Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, where Trump appeared.
Overall, rank-and-file agents are grateful for Texas’ aid, but the state’s wire barriers there rankled somebody in Biden’s Department of Homeland Security.
So agents were ordered to cut and remove them last September.
Texas sued to stop that destruction, so the Justice Department went to the Supreme Court to win the administration’s right to keep cutting Texas’ wire.
While the justices were deliberating, Texas upped the ante and seized Shelby Park, a border recreation area, and laid down even more wire.
By the time the court ruled in Biden’s favor 12 days later, he must have felt like the dog that caught the car.
The legal battle to destroy the wire barriers undermined his claims that he was doing all he could to secure the border.
You’ll notice DHS hasn’t touched the wire since the justices ruled.
Shelby Park is the new Alamo, and Biden doesn’t want to be seen as the modern-day Santa Anna.
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