Texas has placed concertina wire along miles of the Rio Grande. Greg Abbott, Governor, refuses to recognize that the United States - not Texas - is responsible for patrol of the border. See Arizona v. United States (2012).
- GWC
from the brief of the United States:
Under the Supremacy Clause, state law cannot be applied to
restrain those federal agents from carrying out their federally
authorized activities. That conclusion follows from centuries of
this Court’s precedent: Maryland could not tax the Bank of the
United States (McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316 (1819))
or enforce its driver’s license laws against federal Post
Office workers delivering mail (Johnson v. Maryland, 254 U.S. 51
(1920)); California could not bring criminal charges against a
Deputy U.S. Marshal for his actions to protect a Supreme Court
Justice (In re Neagle, 135 U.S. 1, 75 (1890)); and Arizona could
not superimpose its own approval process on a congressionally au-
thorized dam-construction project (Arizona v. California, 283 U.S.
423 (1931)). So too here: Texas cannot use state tort law to
restrain federal Border Patrol agents carrying out their federal
duties.
The court of appeals’ contrary ruling inverts the Supremacy
Clause by requiring federal law to yield to Texas law. If ac-
cepted, the court’s rationale would leave the United States at the
mercy of States that could seek to force the federal government to
conform the implementation of federal immigration law to varying
state-law regimes. For example, California recently enacted a
prohibition against private detention facilities that would have
barred the federal government from contracting with private enti-
ties to operate immigration detention centers. See Geo Group,
Inc. v. Newsom, 50 F.4th 745, 750 (9th Cir. 2022) (en banc). In
conflict with the Fifth Circuit’s decision here, the en banc Ninth
Circuit correctly held that the Supremacy Clause prohibits such
interference with the federal government’s operations. Id. at
758.
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