Federal, State Tensions Rise Over Eagle Pass Park Dispute
Summary from the AllSides News Team
A dispute over a small Texas park along the border with Mexico is sparking debate over federal authority.
For Context: On Jan. 10, the Texas National Guard put a fence around Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, Texas, preventing federal officials from entering the park that sits along the state’s border with Mexico and is a popular crossing point for unauthorized migrants. Department of Homeland Security General Counsel Jonathan Meyer requested the state open the park to federal officials last week. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton rejected the request.
National Security Threat? David Rothkopf (Lean Left bias) called on Biden to take “decisive action” against Abbott, determining “MAGA Republican immigration policy” to be “at the center of two serious-as-a-heart-attack threats to U.S. national security” and Abbott’s actions to be “among the most serious direct threats to the legal principles that hold the U.S. federal system together since the darkest days of the U.S. civil rights movement.”
Biden’s PR Nightmare? Rich Lowry (Right bias) sided with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, arguing the governor has “packed a big PR and political punch” with his actions at the border. Abbott has “managed to get the federal government in the position of actually removing physical barriers to illegal immigration at the border and insisting that it is imperative that it be permitted to continue doing so. This alone is a PR debacle for the administration, but it comes in a controversy … that will garner massive attention out of proportion to its practical importance.”
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From the Left
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MAGA Republican immigration policy is no longer just a series of cynical, cruel, ill-considered, half-baked, ham-fisted, pig-headed political stunts, although it remains all of those things. It is now at the center of two serious-as-a-heart-attack threats to U.S. national security—threats that are themselves each potentially more grave than the chronic problems with immigration that are their ostensible cause.
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As the Friday night deadline approached for a Homeland Security request for the State of Texas to open up Shelby Park in Eagle Pass to federal authorities, the state’s attorney general shot back a letter saying they aren’t backing down.
In a letter Friday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton disputed a claim by DHS officials in a previous letter that federal authorities have rights to Shelby Park lands that were established during the building border barrier in 2008.
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