Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a letter with the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals urging an expedited process in the concertina wire fencing case.
The letter, authored by Solicitor General Aaron Nielson, explains that Texas sought injunctive relief to halt the Biden administration and federal border patrol agents from destroying the wire fence barricades.
The attorney general said in a press release that the letter highlights extremely misleading claims about Texas’ border security made by the Biden administration.
“Many news outlets amplified these false claims to blame Texas for deaths that occurred at an illegal border crossing in the Rio Grande,” he continued. “That narrative that has been completely disproven. While Biden’s open borders doctrine has created a nationwide immigration disaster and untold suffering, Texas is doing everything we can to uphold law and order.”
While a request for a temporary restraining order to prevent the Biden administration from destroying the concertina wire fences was granted in October of last year by a district court, the move to convert it into a preliminary injunction was denied on November 29 because it believed there was no waiver of sovereign immunity at the federal level.
“A motions panel of this Court, however, granted Texas’s motion for an injunction pending appeal and Defendants’ motion to expedite the appeal,” it says. “According to Defendants’ motion to expedite, ‘[t]he significance of the injunction’s practical effects on federal law-enforcement officers’ day-to-day conduct along the border alone warrants expedition.’”
The letter concludes by asking the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to “schedule any supplemental briefing or oral argument expeditiously.”
