Supreme Court Backs Biden in Dispute With Texas Over Border Barrier

A federal appeals court had ruled that Border Patrol agents may not remove concertina wire erected by the state except for medical emergencies.

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Concertina wire has injured migrants who have crossed into Texas.

The Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration on Monday, allowing federal officials to cut or remove parts of a concertina-wire barrier along the Mexican border that Texas erected to keep migrants from crossing into the state.

The ruling, by a 5-to-4 vote, was a victory for the administration in the increasingly bitter dispute between the White House and Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, an outspoken critic of President Biden’s border policy who has shipped busloads of migrants to northern cities.

Since 2021, Mr. Abbott, a third-term Republican, has mounted an aggressive multibillion-dollar campaign to impose more stringent measures at the southern border to deter migrants from entering the country. Those include erecting concertina wire along the banks of the Rio Grande, installing a barrier of buoys in the river and enacting a sweeping law that allows state and local law enforcement to arrest migrants crossing from Mexico.

In lifting an appeals court ruling that had generally prohibited the administration from removing the wire, the justices gave no reasons, which is typical when they act on emergency applications. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s three liberal members to form a majority.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit last month limited the ability of federal Border Patrol agents to cut the wire. The panel prohibited agents “from damaging, destroying or otherwise interfering with Texas’ c-wire fence” while the appeal is pending, but made an exception for medical emergencies that are likely to result in “serious bodily injury or death.”

Ken Paxton, Texas’ attorney general, sued the administration in October, saying that Border Patrol agents had unlawfully destroyed state property and thwarted the state’s efforts to block migrants from crossing the border. According to the lawsuit, border agents cut the wire at least 20 times “to admit aliens illegally entering Texas.”

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