Greg Abbott Scolded by Largest Texas Newspaper for Defying Supreme Court

Texas’ largest newspaper, the Houston Chronicle, scolded Governor Greg Abbott on Saturday for defying the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to temporarily bar the use of razor wire at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Abbott has been in multiple legal battles with the Department of Justice (DOJ) over his migrant deterrent tactics. As the U.S. faces a surge in illegal border crossings, Abbott has tried to fend migrants off, using razor wire along parts of the southern border and a circular saw floating barrier in the Rio Grande river. The Biden administration has called these tactics “dangerous” and “cruel.”

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration in a 5-4 ruling, allowing U.S. Border Patrol agents to temporarily remove the razor wire that Texas officials put up under Abbott’s orders while litigation over the issue proceeds. After this latest legal blow, Abbott issued a statement on Wednesday, declaring Texas’ “right to self-defense.” He also posted to X, formerly Twitter, on Monday, and wrote “this is not over” and called the razor wire “an effective deterrent.”

In an opinion piece published Saturday, the Houston Chronicle’s editorial board wrote, “Abbott, a former Texas Supreme Court justice, apparently thinks he knows better than the highest court in the nation what the U.S. Constitution says.”

The Chronicle called out the hypocrisy of Abbott’s self-defense claim, writing, “The governor of a state that has maimed migrants with razor wire, deprived them of water in the summer and left to them to drown in the river is arguing self-defense.”

Abbott was also compared to former Alabama Governor George Wallace in the newspaper’s opinion piece. Wallace, a segregationist who was in office during the civil rights movement, ordered the police to close Alabama’s public schools in Huntsville, Mobile, Tuskegee and Birmingham in 1963, defying federal orders to integrate the state’s schools. He also personally blocked two Black students from registering at the University of Alabama.

“He’ll earn a place in the history books right next to Gov. George Wallace in the schoolhouse door, promising to block integration in defiance of the Supreme Court’s ban on school segregation,” the editorial board wrote of Abbott. “We can think of better legacies for a man who has the brains and education to know better.”

Newsweek reached out to Abbott’s office via email for comment.

Abbott, like many of his fellow Republican lawmakers, blame President Joe Biden for what they call a crisis at the southern border.

There were more than 2.4 million encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border during the 2023 fiscal year, up from roughly 1.7 million in 2021, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data. Encounter data includes USBP Title 8 Apprehensions, Office of Field Operations (OFO) Title 8 Inadmissibles and Title 42 Expulsions.

Meanwhile, Biden signaled that he is open to “massive changes” on border policy at the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting at the White House last week, an initiative that a bipartisan group of senators are currently working on.