Statement from AG Ken Paxton on Border Litigation

Ken Paxton, Texas Attorney General

AUSTIN, TEXAS – (News Release) Attorney General Ken Paxton released the following statement after the June 6th argument before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Texas’s concertina wire lawsuit against the federal government.

“Today, Texas made an outstanding case for our right to defend our State and protect our property from destruction by the federal government. We emphasized that a judge found that federal border officials destroyed our state’s property not to enforce federal law but rather to facilitate illegal border crossing.

 \We also demonstrated that the Biden Administration was not forthright to the Supreme Court of the United States about Texas’s border security actions. Earlier this year, many news outlets amplified a false narrative by blaming Texas for deaths that occurred at an illegal border crossing in the Rio Grande. That narrative has been completely disproven, revealing that these tragic deaths were weaponized to score political points. Not only has Texas shown that the federal government knew at the time that Texas was not responsible for the tragedy but even the federal government now agrees this issue is irrelevant to any of the questions properly before the court.

 We also urged the court to review the video footage from September 20, 2023, that shows the Biden Administration blatantly cutting Texas’s concertina wire to allow illegal crossings at the border.

 Further, Texas noted significant contradictions between President Biden’s recent Executive Order and the arguments made by his Administration in this case. The federal government has insisted from the beginning of this case that migrants cannot be turned away because they believe all aliens are entitled to asylum protections upon setting foot in the United States. Now, Biden represents his Executive Order as a tool to reduce border crossings by turning away some aliens who claim asylum, revealing they do not even believe their own arguments. As a consequence, Biden has drastically weakened his own position in this litigation.

 I will continue to pursue every remedy available to stand up for our citizens against Biden’s border catastrophe.”