Just For A Complete Record -- As We Await USDC Judge Alia L. Moses' Afternoon Hearing And Arguments -- In Del Rio, Texas...

We will drop a link to the exceedingly dubious supplemental memo of "law" Gov. Abbott's boys filed this morning, ostensibly to answer the very solid one from CBP of last week.

In it, Texas preposterously argues that common law (or a few moldy old non-controlling cases, in disparate areas of local state law) will trump any Congressional/federal statutory grant of explicit authority to federal border authorities, to use its discretion in apprehending asylum seekers along the Eagle Pass section of the Rio Grande. . . either on land, or in the water.

That's just. . . silly. Were that true, no state would ever have to follow (for example) EPA rules, or IRS directives on capital gains or trusts and estates transfer taxation -- if that state said "well, that is a burden on our state's citizens".

As I say, that cannot pass a straight face test. Let's now see if Alia Moses will adhere to clear and long-standing federal law, as the Chief USDC Judge in West Texas.

As CBP wrote last week, quite cogently:

. . .Texas seems to claim that because Defendants have acknowledged the usefulness or benefits of concertina wire in some instances, it is per se unreasonable to cut through it in others. Reply at 13. This argument makes little sense. Locks on gates have beneficial uses. But Texas’s witness Mr. Banks acknowledged that Border Patrol agents may cut them when, in their “judgment,” “it is necessary” to apprehend a migrant. Tr. at 111 (Banks testimony). The same is true for concertina wire, as Texas’s own actions to cut the wire to provide medical assistance and make arrests show. . . .

Onward, grinning. . . as the Sun is out, but the air is crisply chilly -- over the newly fallen, very bright white snow, here. . . .

नमस्ते