In a decision that was a happy surprise, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Biden administration’s view that federal law controls international borders, not state law.
The vote was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett voting with the three liberal justices.
Governor Greg Abbott ordered that razor wire and buoys be strung across the Rio Grand at locations where migrants were crossing from Mexico to Texas. The U.S. Botder Patrol was blocked by the Texas National Guard, which took control of policing the border. Three migrants, a woman and her two young children, drowned while the Texas National Guard watched and prevented the Border Patrol from rendering assistance.
The Biden administration sued the state of Texas, asserting the primacy of federal law. The federal district court ruled in favor of the federal government. Texas appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the most conservative in the nation, which ruled in favor of Texas. Many legal scholars thought that ruling was bizarre.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the federal government and against Texas, meaning that the U.S. Border Patrol will resume their duties. This decision is a knock on the secessionist inclinations of far-right firebrand Greg Abbott and the Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
This decision knocked down the claim that state law could override federal law and that a state on the international border could take control.
What’s truly shocking is that four justices were willing to give states the authority to overrule federal law. Shades of 1860!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This decision was a 5-4? Wow. It is time to expand the court. That was an easy 9-0. Of course, the four who ruled against the federal power knew what the founding fathers were thinking.
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A small addition:
“That was an easy 9-0. Of course, the four who ruled against the federal power knew what the founding fathers were thinking about the American/Mexican border.”
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I am constantly amazed at the foresight of the founding fathers.
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If Trump wins the election, there may be a new set of voices agreeing that we need to expand the court.
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It would be a little late by then.
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What Abbott and his band of miscreants are doing is inhumane, and it violates a treaty the US has with Mexico. The US does not have the right to put impediments in the Rio Grande according to the treaty. I agree with Roy. This should have been a 9-0 decision if the justices were unbiased. The border is the responsibility of the federal government, but it requires funding that has to come from The House. Both parties need to work together in order to solve this problem.
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Some of the justices are well known to be corrupt.
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Obviously, they don’t live on the Texas border. Texans are begging for help and not getting it.
Interesting how the answer is always to pack the court when the answer is against your side of thinking. 9-0 give me a break!
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Do you really believe that states should control what happens on their international borders? So every state that has a border with Canada can say what happens on their section of the border? Ditto for Mexico. That’s asinine!
Stringing razor wire in the middle of the Rio Grande and watching people drown really shows that Texas is capable of managing that border. I’m surprised they aren’t shooting migrants although even Abbott I believe realized that might get him in trouble with the federal government.
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You are right that something needs to be done. It would help if the extreme right in the House wouldn’t block immigration reform legislation. I was a little annoyed with Pritzger when I heard him say he needed the city of Chicago to tell him where he could build shelters. I thought to myself that I didn’t realize that Chicago was the only place to build them. I don’t know the city well enough to suggest locations, but it doesn’t strike me as just the city’s responsibility. They are already spending their own resources. If nothing else, the state could help to cover them. Obviously, the federal government needs to take charge. I am really tired of the petty temper tantrums that have stalled so much that needs to be done. And yes, it is a disgrace that the Supreme court vote wasn’t 9-0.
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April buys into talking points, risking her and other women’s rights.
The GOP answer, in the lone star state, is more Texas judges like Paul Pressler (who, in addition to being a leader in Texas politics, was also a leader in the Southern Baptist Convention when it decided women can’t lead in churches). Fortunate for some, not all types of sexual activity carry pregnancy risks.
Each time April votes Republican she should think about the men in her party like Bill Dean (father of 10 who said women in marriages can’t be raped by husbands). Bill Dean’s a rural state rep in Ohio’s theocracy. He’s a sponsor of a bill that would deny majority rule for Ohioans, a camp he shares with Ohio archdioceses.
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One indictment of April’s reasoning is her shared political beliefs with commenter Zebra (below) and, the incoherent, Narcissist, Trump.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, a broad swath of Republicans believe Ivy League entitled trump speaks up for the little guy.
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Good news, overall. The U.S. Constitution is unambiguous when it comes to stating who has power over immigration. It’s states in The Naturalization Clause in Article I, § 8, clause 4, that the federal government holds that power. SCOTUS didn’t really have a choice but to uphold it, even though 4 justices apparently thumbed their noses at the Constitution.
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yes yes yes
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These states’ right people are trying to test and limit federal powers, even those clearly stated in The Constitution. Their end game is to call for a constitutional convention in order to rewrite it with a libertarian, right wing influence.
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A Razor-Thin Margin …
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OK. That might be the most horrifying joke ever.
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Will Abbott back down and accept the US Supreme Court’s ruling? If Abbott follows MAGARINO policy, he will not.
If not, I think the next time there is a confrontation between the US Border Patrol and Abbott’s handpicked Texas National Guard troops, the border patrol might not arrive alone. They may arrive with backup. A team of special ops troops from the US Military: Marines, Navy SEALS, Special Forces, DELTA or a CIA SAD team. If it’s a SAD team, we may never find out where those Texas National Guard troops end up buried, if they do not back down.
A Special Forces team a friend of mine was on worked with the US Border Patrol to help them guard the southern border. That says, it isn’t impossible.
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yayyyyyyyyyy let’s let unvaccinated, or any vaccines, pedos, traffickers, drug smuglers etc into our country !!!! What a great win. Wow is wrong with you people? Fentanol is killing thousands and we should open our border for what?????
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The troll is back. Ignore him.
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Zebras are far more intelligent and informed than you are. LOL. Undocumented immigrants have the lowest crime rates of any subgroup in our population. Inform yourself, you ignorant, racist moron.
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Paul Pressler, prominent Republican and Southern Baptist Conference leader is one face of the GOP in Texas.
The widely reported scandal, echoing Jim Jordan’s wrestling period in Ohio and the bishops’ cover-up of Catholic priests, btw- both are GOP, makes Zebra’s choice of adjective, stunningly peculiar.
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This was an inevitable decision given that the federal government is responsible for immigration policy. Billions of impoverished, minimally educated, low-skilled people would come to the U.S. if they could. How many of them should be allowed to stay? Give a number.
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3
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I don’t believe in using internet acronyms, but LOL.
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Melania’s two parents and who else, Duane?
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Three billion
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Billions? In a world that is on its way to 8 billion total people, you need to revise your math a bit. The pre-08 recession estimate of illegals in the US was 11 million, a significant out-migration occurred between 08 and 09. I have not seen a recent estimate. Border solutions have been proposed and rejected since Bush II. Every time it seems we are close to a solution, the right wing cries out for more draconian measures.
Do they really want a solution? Or perhaps they want a good fear issue.
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You admit that you have not seen a recent estimate. That is a way of saying that you haven’t made the effort to be informed about this issue, and your very narrow sources of information avoid discussing it. Your uninformed opinion is grounded purely in emotion and political correctness.
In 2018 a researcher at Yale and MIT – very right-wing institutions, you know – concluded that the likely number of illegal immigrants was at least 22.1 million. That means the number in 2024 is much higher than that.
hehill.com/latino/407848-yale-mit-study-22-million-not-11-million-undocumented-immigrants-in-us/
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Corey: Don’t avoid the question by attacking my ignorance, which you know of only because I told you. The question I raised was simple: do Republicans really want a solution?
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What is the supposed “problem” at the border? Undocumented immigrants are a POSITIVE for our country. The Repugnicans re using this “immigration problem” bs to stoke racial fear and hatred JUST AS HITLER DID. On the day before the election that gave him enough seats to be a commanding force in Germany, Hitler gave a speech about “the immigration problem” in which he made the same sort of uninformed but racist appeals.
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Roy, you ask a good question. Perhaps lots of companies are secretly salivating over the prospect of importing all that cheap labor while they complain about the border. They see a chance to push back against the American labor movement.
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Corey,
A Supreme Court decision that says federal laws take precedence over state laws does not determine how many immigrants may enter the country. Control over international borders is the responsibility of the federal government.
We had a Civil War about states’ rights.
Congress has refused to establish a sane immigration policy. What is the Republican plan? There is none. They prefer to demagogue the issue, rather than solve it.
It’s also the case that farmers, hotels, restaurants, and the hospitality industry as a whole wants low-wage workers; they need them.
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The US was created by impoverished, minimally educated, low-skilled people. These people, after half a generation, are producing incredibly well-educated and productive members of our society. In EVERY PLACE in America where there has been a large influx of undocumented immigrants, there has been a dramatic increase in standard of living and productivity as a result. If you bother to learn anything about this issue, CR, you will find that to be the case. See the extensive analyses and reporting that both Brookings and CATO have done of this topic. I have posted these here before. I’m not going to take the time to do it again. If I did that every time someone posted a damned fool uninformed, ignorant, racist comment like this, I would have no time for my own work. Educate yourself. Go to Google. Type in Immigration, Brookings.
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The few million undocumented immigrants to the US are barely a blip in our economy, but all economic studies show that they are a positive blip, resulting in strong positive measurable effects on the economy as a whole over fairly short periods of time. The create demand, which creates jobs. They start small businesses. They hire citizens. They are driven to improve themselves, and their kids are breathtakingly productive and rapidly become educated. You are an uniformed racist moron, CR. Educate yourself.
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Bob Shepherd quotes Brookings whenever anyone raises the question about the consequences of massive illegal immigration. Earth to Bob: Brookings is not an irrefutable source; other credible sources don’t agree with them. The end game for the Left is to import tens of millions of low-skilled people and give them citizenship. They will then be eligible for ALL public assistance programs. Their low incomes will not generate anywhere close to enough tax revenues to offset the costs of the public services they receive – exactly the same as for existing low-income citizens. That’s a deliberate feature of a progressive income tax system.
Calling everyone racist who points out these facts should be beneath intelligent people. After all, most prominent Democrats said these very same things pre-2008. Educate yourself about that history.
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And your facts to prove this?
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I wonder what it is like to go through life so afraid of black and brown people and so filled with hate toward them. We are an immigrant country. You are deeply uninformed. I wonder if you actually know any immigrants. These are the finest people on the planet, and we are the richer for their presence. And, of course, we are an immigrant country.
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I am far from sorry for citing actual information about undocumented immigration in the United States as opposed to Reich-wing racist hate speech. EXACTLY WHAT HITLER DID. He campaigned on whipping up fervor among the semi-literate and racist against immigrants and foreign influences. He and Goebbels, like Trump and Miller and Sessions after him, knew that this kind of ignorant hate-mongering works.
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Corey,
How have you not already been informed about the answer
from one of your Republican colleagues who is prominent? Harvard Constitutional law professor, Adrian Vermuele, who is described as liberalism’s most dangerous critic, summed up the answer in 3 short paragraphs. I speculate that you and April will like his approach.
The summary is posted at Mirror of Justice, “blog…legal theory…”, titled, “A Principle of Immigration Priority.”
The beauty of his solution is that 6 of the SCOTUS jurists would be aligned in his thinking.
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Here’s the article you are referencing, Linda:
https://academic.oup.com/edinburgh-scholarship-online/book/21772/chapter-abstract/181737337?redirectedFrom=fulltext
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Linda, in order to share a link, all you have to do is navigate to the page you want to share, copy the URL (the thing that begins with https://), using Control or Command C, and then past that, using Control or Command V, into the comment. This kind of thing will result:
https://academic.oup.com/edinburgh-scholarship-online/book/21772/chapter-abstract/181737337?redirectedFrom=fulltext
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Corey, I often quote Brookings on this issue because they have exhaustively studied the economic literature on this subject and have reported the findings in digestible form. But I have also quoted CATO on this topic, as well as the underlying research on which both base their reports. Undocumented immigration is, overall, a plus for American workers.
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And fear-mongering about immigrants is overall a plus for Fascists everywhere. They all have done and are doing it. THIS IS NOT A NEW EXTREMIST RIGHTWING TACTIC. Hitler and Mussolini were masters of it.
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As Haig Bosmajian pointed out long ago in his superb book The Language of Oppression, Fascists LOVE the immigration issue and typically engage in campaigns of lies and mischaracterizations on this because of two means of propagandistic manipulation that it affords. First, people fear the unknown, and the foreign and foreigners are to many of them unknown. Second, they can refer to immigrants metaphorically as vermin or pestilence–the unwanted outside thing, and so harness the negative associations with vermin and pestilence. So, what the Fascists use this issue, inevitably, consistently, because it has these two powerful propagandistic features: appeal to fear and to disgust. Propaganda has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the actual facts. It has EVERYTHING to do with awakening primal, archetypal, fears and USING THOSE politically to manipulate a populace. The less educated that populace, the easier the manipulation.
“I love the poorly educated.” –Donald Trump
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The Fed had all the law on their side. They had nothing.
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What I wrote above is unclear. Texas had nothing going for them.
The Fed had the Constitution.
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It was perfectly clear.
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Let’s see how this Court rules on the Trump immunity case. That should be a 9-0 slam dunk. If it’s as razor thin as this decision, then we have a scarier Court overseeing the laws of our land than we thought.
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We have a scary court. It has been terrifying ever since Citzens Untied.
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What a bunch of troglodytes and goons.
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I was thinking the same thing.
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I just want to mention that Trump is going to lose. Two reasons. First, he is a loser. Second, his poll numbers are inflated. He was supposed to win New Hampshire by 22 points. He’s winning by 9. That’s a pretty big margin of error, my friend. Trump is going down.
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There will be four more years.
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I hope you are right. Biden has a lot of work to do to entice young people and people of color to vote for him. They are pulling away because of the billions that are going to fund Israel.
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This is because the conservative elites want unlimited immigration as do the Democrats- to keep wages down. Not surprising at all. What is surprising are all the ‘useful idiot’ liberals who think they are being all wonderful by supporting unlimited immigration, not realizing it is destroying working class lives in the US.
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Harry, I don’t know of any Democrat who supports open borders/unlimited immigration.
If you do, please cite their name and your source. Otherwise you are spouting nonsense.
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They are not that idiotic. It doesn’t suppress wages generally.
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It doesn’t lessen the number or quality or pay of jobs available for the working class in America either. ANOTHER TRUMPANZEE LIE. Economists have studied the hell out of this question. Undocumented immigrants, like all other people, work and buy gasoline and groceries and so directly contribute to economic productivity AND to demand, which creates jobs. They are also 10 times as likely as are citizens to start small businesses that employee citizens of the US. And they pay taxes. And they qualify for and so receive very little in return in the way of social services. Overall, their presence results in a little over 1 percent INCREASE in the jobs available to working class Americans. Educate yourself out of the bigotry and hate, “harry.”
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It doesn’t lessen the number or quality or pay of jobs available for the working class in America either. Economists have studied this question. Undocumented immigrants, like all other people, work and buy gasoline and groceries and so directly contribute to economic productivity AND to demand, and demand creates jobs. They are also 10 times as likely as are citizens to start small businesses that employee citizens of the US. And they pay taxes. And they qualify for and so receive very little in return in the way of social services. Overall, their presence results in a little over 1 percent INCREASE in the jobs available to working class Americans. Educate yourself, “harry.”
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Err, yes it does. When you import tens of millions of extra people, it tends to push down the price of labor (and push up the prices of fixed capital, ie farms and businesses that employ that labor). Especially when that labor is frightened illegal labor, that will literally work for anything rather than get deported. Just read the horrific stories of immigrant children meatpackers. Its amazing how liberals think they are being all ‘progressive’ by supporting open borders, when in fact it is a massive gift to the owning class and the employers.
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No liberal supports open borders.
I do not support open borders.
Biden does not support open borders.
Biden just offered a deal to Republicans giving them what they wanted.
Trump intervened and told them not to agree to a bipartisan deal because he wants to use the immigration issue, not to fix it.
Complain to the Republicans.
They want open borders to help Trump and to provide cheap labor to their donors.
BIDEN OFFERED A DEAL TO REPUBLICANS AND THEY REFUSED IT.
TRUMP IS BLOCKING A BIPARTISAN DEAL ON THE BORDER.
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Harry, you really need to read the actual economic studies on this issue. You are profoundly mistaken and confused. You have bought hook, line, and sinker the false racist propaganda narrative peddled by the neo-Fascist Trumpian Repugnican Party.
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Just a reminder that those who have been allowed to cross the border and have subsequently made their ways to cities like LA or NYC or Chicago or Boston are LEGALLY present in this country. CBP and DHS have their bio-metrics and their contact information. These folks have a court date which they will most likely (greater than 95%) keep.
We could reduce wait times by assigning more personnel to hear their cases. We could give them permission to work. We could do much, but the GOP prefers to shout “CRISIS at the border” to making sane immigration policy.
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Exactly right, Christine.
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After my son graduated college, he and a friend made it an adventure to travel by bicycle across much of the world. They crossed the US twice, traveled through much of Mexico, Costa Rica, Panamá, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and many countries in Europe. Locals, strangers, often fed them, gave them rides in bad weather, allowed them to sleep in community centers or churches or their homes, invited them to barbecues and festivals. They’ve stayed in touch with some of their hosts.
So when the two adventurers reunited in Brooklyn to sell Christmas trees in December, my son was shocked to hear this same friend disparage people on the streets as “illegals”. The poisonous mindset is contagious.
Tragically, it’s likely the end of more than a decade of friendship.
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!!!!!!!
What a sad (and amazing) story!!!!!
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I do wish it had a happier ending, Bob.
Also, FWIW, these adventures were not my favorite time as a parent!
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I can only imagine! But bully for them. I was TERRIFIED when my daughter was in France, for Christ’s sake, and when my stepdaughter was in Senegal and Mexico and Iceland and the many other places she traveled to solo.
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Christine, what an adventure! If I knew what street corner he was on in Brooklyn, I would have bought my Xmas tree from him.
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He’d have been honored!
Real Phileas Fogg vibes. He’s an avid photographer and has some amazing photos he hopes to publish one day.
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