Biden admin demands Texas remove razor wire border barriers in the Rio Grande

The Biden administration has demanded the removal of floating razor wire barriers installed by Texas to prevent migrants from crossing the Rio Grande and entering the United States illegally.

Governor Greg Abbott has defended the tactic of using the razor wire, suggesting it wouldn't be necessary if the federal government would do more to solve the border crisis plaguing his state and the country at large.



During a White House press briefing on Wednesday, a reporter asked Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about the issue.
 

"Texas has been installing these buoys along with razor wire on the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass," the reporter began, pointing out that Mexico had filed a diplomatic complaint seeking to have them removed. "They say the state is violating international treaties and that they raised this with the administration three weeks ago. Do you agree with Mexico that Texas is violating these international treaties?"

Jean-Pierre responded by accusing Abbott of having "treated the situation that we're seeing at the border in an inhumane way."

"It is atrocious, the actions that he decides to take," she said, suggesting that "instead of dealing with this issue in a way that we can get to a resolution and working together, he turns it into a political stunt."

When asked whether the Biden administration would force Abbott to remove the barriers, Jean-Pierre said the Department of Justice would "certainly" look into that course of action, but did not say one way or the other whether the government believed it was the right thing to do.

Abbott announced the deployment of the barriers in June, stating at the time that they would "proactively prevent illegal crossings between ports of entry by making it more difficult to cross the Rio Grande and reach the Texas side of the southern border."

Construction got underway in July, with the first 1,000 feet being laid out near Eagle Pass, an illegal migration hotspot.

The barriers are just one of the many measures taken by Texas to try and quell the flood of migrants entering the state. An estimated $5.1 billion has been allocated for border security.