Unanswered pleas for help amid a historic influx of illegal immigrants at the southern border have sparked a federal-state battle three years in the making, a feud that has been teased as laying the ground for a civil war.

Two thousand miles apart, Biden administration leaders in Washington, D.C., and Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R-TX) administration in Austin are carefully considering the next move in what has escalated slowly and now at a mounting pace into a showdown of states’ rights on international matters.

When did the fight begin?

The border crisis itself began in February 2021, just weeks after President Joe Biden took office and rescinded a plethora of Trump-era immigration policies, and the number of illegal immigrants encountered at the southern border topped 100,000 that month alone.

The crisis affected Texas more than the three other border states, California, Arizona, and New Mexico, as more people were caught entering Texas illegally than in the others combined.

On March 6, 2021, Abbott launched Operation Lone Star, a statewide initiative that would send more than 10,000 Department of Public Safety troopers and Texas National Guard soldiers to regions of the border to help federal law enforcement catch smugglers moving immigrants by car and across the river.

Abbott specifically blamed Biden’s policies for triggering the increase in illegal immigration, up from 78,000 immigrants encountered in January 2021.

“The crisis at our southern border continues to escalate because of Biden Administration policies that refuse to secure the border and invite illegal immigration,” Abbott said. “Texas supports legal immigration but will not be an accomplice to the open border policies that cause, rather than prevent, a humanitarian crisis in our state and endanger the lives of Texans. We will surge the resources and law enforcement personnel needed to confront this crisis.”

Over the past three years, Abbott and Biden administration officials have gone back and forth fighting over the cause of the crisis and how it ought to be addressed.

Since March 2021, the number of illegal immigrants encountered at the southern border each month has ranged from 164,000 to 270,000 people and has shown no signs of returning to historically normal levels below 70,000, according to federal data.

When did the feud explode?

Abbott has pivoted in terms of where Operation Lone Star forces are deployed and how they operate, which at times has led to blowback from Democrats and the Biden administration.

Before the latest fight over Border Patrol being locked out of Eagle Pass, the state was already involved in lawsuits involving the Biden administration over the border.

For example, in April 2022, the state announced it would begin providing free bus rides for immigrants who had been released into border communities after illegally crossing. The move was intended to give “sanctuary” cities, including Washington, D.C., New York, and Chicago, a feel for the impact that illegal immigration was having on southern border communities by bringing thousands of immigrants right to those city’s doorstep.

The Biden administration has not sued, but White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters in July 2022 that Abbott was “using” immigrants as a “political tool.”

In May 2023, Texas DPS in riot gear refused to allow immigrants who had waded across the Rio Grande to pass through a barricaded area on the riverbank of Brownsville.

In June 2023, Abbott announced a 1,000-foot buoy wall in the Rio Grande between Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico. The buoys were meant to force immigrants to cross the river in specific areas where the military could apprehend them.

The Department of Justice sued Abbott in July on the basis that the state had not obtained permission from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a requirement of the federal Rivers and Harbors Act. As of now, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has allowed Abbott to keep the floating buoys in the water through May, when a new hearing is scheduled.

Then in October 2023, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration over federal Border Patrol agents’ presence and actions at the border.

Paxton claimed that the agents were “facilitat[ing] the surge of migrants” into Eagle Pass by cutting through circular fences of razor wire that the state had installed in select parts of the border since 2021.

In December 2023, Abbott signed a law that will allow state police to arrest people on immigration charges, an authority that until now was only available to federal police because immigration violations are dictated by federal law, not state law.

The law, SB 4, will take effect in March. The DOJ sued in early January.

Why did things suddenly take a turn this month?

The legal case over razor wire installed in Eagle Pass has been the driving force behind the worsening feud between the Abbott and Biden administrations this month.

On Jan. 10, frustrated with Border Patrol agents cutting the wire to apprehend immigrants who would later likely be released into the country, Texas authorities fenced in a 2.5-mile area of Eagle Pass’s riverfront and locked out all federal police, including Border Patrol.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has twice sent the state letters demanding that the fence be removed and federal authorities be allowed back in, but Abbott has shown no sign of caving.

The Supreme Court ruled earlier this week that federal agents could cut the wire, but the ruling has no impact on the state’s seizure of city land and barring federal agents from accessing the river where the wire has been installed, leaving both parties at an impasse.

Half of the country’s governors have mounted a full-force campaign on Abbott’s behalf, coming out publicly Wednesday and Thursday to say they stand shoulder to shoulder with the embattled Texas leader, an unspoken warning to the Biden administration.

“President Biden and his Administration have left Americans and our country completely vulnerable to unprecedented illegal immigration pouring across the Southern border,” the 25 governors wrote in a statement. “Instead of upholding the rule of law and securing the border, the Biden Administration has attacked and sued Texas for stepping up to protect American citizens from historic levels of illegal immigrants, deadly drugs like fentanyl, and terrorists entering our country.

“We stand in solidarity with our fellow Governor, Greg Abbott, and the State of Texas in utilizing every tool and strategy, including razor wire fences, to secure the border,” the governors continued.

On Thursday, Abbott appeared on Fox News and issued the same call to action for the Biden administration that he has made for three years.

“And Joe Biden actually does have an option here,” Abbott said. “Joe Biden’s option is to enforce the laws of the United States and stop this illegal entry.”

What happens now?

Abbott shows no sign of upending Operation Lone Star and data published by the state each week show it has had a significant impact.

As of Jan. 19, the state was responsible for apprehending 496,000 illegal immigrants and human smugglers who got past Border Patrol and would otherwise have made it into the United States undetected.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

State authorities had also seized more than 453 million potentially lethal doses of fentanyl that made it across the border past federal police.

With just over one month until Texas could begin arresting illegal immigrants on its own, multiple state-federal lawsuits still making their way through the courts, and a presidential election just nine months away, the fight is likely to get uglier before, and if, it sees a resolution.