The federal Justice Department filed a lawsuit Friday to block Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's latest attempt to fill gaps in border security with a policy that allows state troopers to stop and turn back vehicles carrying illegal immigrants away from the boundary region.
Border Patrol officials acknowledged the chaos on the border in affidavits the Justice Department filed with its lawsuit.
Brain S. Hastings, the Border Patrol's chief patrol agent in the Rio Grande Valley region, said agents in his sector alone caught and released 9,000 illegal immigrants last week, and have released 100,700 migrants this fiscal year.
Russell Hott, assistant director of custody management at ICE, said in another filing that the deportation agency would have to deploy more people to the border if contractors can't be used to shuttle illegal immigrants.
Homeland Security itself has already taken ICE officers off their interior duties and sent them to the border, and new Biden administration rules have deeply cut into the number of arrests ICE is making in the interior anyway.
His order doesn't apply to federal law enforcement officers, so Border Patrol agents and ICE officers could still shuttle migrants.
Contractors could be stopped if they are believed to be driving migrants deeper into the state beyond the border area.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/jul/30/biden-administration-sues-texas-to-block-state-tro/
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