Missouri, Texas AGs sue Biden to force U.S.-Mexico border wall construction

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration Thursday, seeking to resume construction of a wall along the southern border.

President Joe Biden issued a memo on his first day in office halting construction of barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border, a signature policy of former President Donald Trump. The Department of Homeland Security officially terminated the construction contracts this month.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, argues that funding for the projects is mandated under the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, which took effect in December of 2020 just weeks before Biden took office. The measure designated $1.4 billion for a border wall.

Schmitt and Paxton contend that Biden had “neither constitutional nor statutory authority to refuse to spend funds Congress authorized mandating the construction of the border wall.”

Schmitt, a Republican, is running for Missouri’s open U.S. Senate seat in 2022 and has promised at campaign events to take a “blowtorch” to Biden’s agenda.

“Time and again, the Biden Administration has refused to take concrete action to quell the worsening border crisis, inviting the cartels and human and drug smugglers to take advantage of our porous border,” Schmitt said in a statement announcing the suit.

“Without a border wall, illegal immigrants, coyotes, and bad actors can simply march across our southern border and into the interior. The border wall needs to be built, the funds have been appropriated to continue to build the wall, and yet the Biden Administration outright refuses to do so,” Schmitt said.

Schmitt and Paxton held a news conference at the border in El Paso on Thursday afternoon to announce their legal filing..

“It is a crisis, but it’s a man-made crisis,” Paxton said. “It’s a crisis that was invited, that I think is purposeful and the numbers of illegal immigrants this next year could be over 2 million people.”

Biden administration officials did not immediately respond to the lawsuit from the Republican attorneys general. The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan congressional agency, issued a legal recommendation earlier this year that Biden’s pause to border wall construction did not violate the law.

The proposed border wall has resonated as a Republican issue since Trump launched his 2016 campaign on the promise of forcing Mexico to pay for its construction. Trump won, but Mexico flatly rejected making any payment. Funding for the wall became a perennial debate in Congress during his presidency.

Earlier this month, DHS called on Congress “to cancel remaining border wall funding and instead fund smarter border security measures, like border technology and modernization of land ports of entry, that are proven to be more effective at improving safety and security at the border.”

Biden’s nominee to lead U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Tuscon Police Chief Chris Magnus, said at his Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday that he would support the construction of barriers parts of the southern border.

“There are some gaps where that could make sense,” he said.

Asked about these comments, White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre Thursday reasserted the administration’s opposition to the border wall.

“We feel that it is a policy that doesn’t work and it’s not just us, you know, experts have said that the border wall is not is not an effective policy,” Jean-Pierre said at a White House briefing.

Schmitt and Paxton’s lawsuits

Schmitt and other GOP contenders in the Senate race have repeatedly sought to associate their campaigns with Trump in a state where his endorsement could determine the winner of the Republican primary. Schmitt’s Republican opponents include former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, who has touted the support of Steve Bannon and other figures associated with the former president.

As attorney general, Schmitt has filed multiple lawsuits seeking to block Biden’s policies and restore Trump’s agenda. He has worked closely with Paxton, the Texas Republican attorney general who spearheaded the baseless lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 election.

A spokesman for the Missouri attorney general’s office didn’t immediately respond to questions about whether Missouri paid for Schmitt’s trip to the border.

The suit is the latest politically-tinged litigation from Schmitt. He has also challenged mask mandates in Kansas City, St. Louis and in Missouri public schools. And he has issued legal guidance giving Kansas City-area parents broad discretion to allow their children to ignore local mask rules.

Paxton said that Thursday’s filing marked his seventh lawsuit against the Biden administration on border issues.

“I won’t rest until Texas is safe from the disaster he created,” Paxton said.

Thursday’s filing follows a previous lawsuit from Schmitt and Paxton that has forced the Biden administration to reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy for asylum seekers.

The Trump era policy requires migrants seeking asylum on grounds of political persecution to wait in Mexico while their claims are considered.

The Biden administration canceled the policy, but a federal judge in Texas issued an injunction in August requiring the administration to reinstate it. The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in August to uphold the judge’s order.

The policy is expected to go in effect again next month as the Biden administration works to ensure the cooperation of the Mexican government.