A recent decision issued by a federal district court in El Paso reveals the tenuous nature of attempts to secure the southwestern border by judicial opinion. The decision relates to measures that the state of Texas has recently established to interdict “the transportation of migrants” who were not authorized to cross the border. It comes on the heels of the Supreme Court’s refusal to stay a lower court’s decision enjoining the Biden administration from terminating the Migrant Protection Protocols, otherwise known as the “Remain in Mexico” program.

The centerpiece of MPP was an agreement with the government of Mexico whereby Mexico would receive non-Mexican nationals who had illegally crossed into the United States from Mexico and then claimed asylum. The migrants would wait in that country until their claim was heard by an immigration judge. In the months since the Biden administration ended enrollments in the MPP, chaos has overwhelmed the U.S. Border Patrol and Texas border communities all along the Rio Grande.