Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton today secured an administrative stay that will prevent the federal government from destroying Texas’s concertina wire fencing along the United States-Mexico border while the case continues to work its way through the courts. The Fifth Circuit has barred federal immigration officials from damaging Texas’s wire fences while the U.S. Department of Justice prepares a response to Texas’s motion for an injunction pending appeal of the district court’s order.
The stay was granted in Texas’s landmark lawsuit against the Biden Administration just days after a federal district court judge denied the State’s effort to enjoin the federal government from cutting, destroying, damaging, or otherwise interfering with Texas’s concertina wire border fence. Attorney General Paxton immediately appealed.
In October, Attorney General Paxton filed a lawsuit and a motion for preliminary injunction against the Biden Administration’s Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”), DHS Secretary Mayorkas, and other agencies and officials after federal agents destroyed Texas’s concertina wire and allowed aliens into Texas on an almost daily basis for weeks. Attorney General Paxton then secured a temporary restraining order on an emergency basis after federal agents escalated their destruction of Texas’s concertina wire border fence just days after Texas filed the lawsuit.
“I am pleased the court recognized the extent of the federal government’s blatant and disturbing efforts to subvert law and order at our State’s border with Mexico,” said Attorney General Paxton. “This is an important step supporting Texas’s right to protect our citizens from Biden’s doctrine of open borders at any cost.”
Texas filed the case with co-counsel the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and together they are seeking to stop the Biden Administration from destroying Texas’s wire fencing.