Texas border city on edge as Gov. Abbott dials up battle with Biden: The border crisis has been reduced to a 2.5-mile stretch named after a Confederate general

EAGLE PASS, Tex. — A century and a half ago, Confederate Gen. Joseph Orville Shelby splashed into the wild waters of the Rio Grande off this border city and fled to Mexico, refusing to surrender his battle flag to Union soldiers.

Now the park named in his honor has become a front line in a feud between the state and the federal government — a power struggle over who ultimately has the right to control the border and the tide of humanity trying to cross it.

Texas National Guard Humvees carry rifle-toting troops and patrol newly erected gates to the municipal park previously used for family cookouts and Independence Day festivities. Tents, military trucks, heavy equipment and portable toilets dot the edge of a browning fairway. Along the riverbank, Gov. Greg Abbott ® has ordered the state National Guard to deploy coils of razor wire, rusting shipping containers and dirt-filled barrels to declare his state’s sovereignty.

In a Shelby-like act of defiance, the governor is invoking the state’s right to defend itself against what he sees as an invasion. Abbott made national headlines when he seized the park in Eagle Pass this month and shut out U.S. Border Patrol agents who had long used the terrain as a staging point — action the governor’s supporters saw as a take-charge move, while his detractors viewed it as a dangerous overreach of state power.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered Abbott to allow Border Patrol agents to remove or cut wire to reach the river and aid migrants in distress. Abbott’s troops are installing even more wire. Twenty-five Republican governors recently signed a letter expressing their support for Abbott’s rebellion, and former president Donald Trump is calling on states to join the standoff.

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