Texas AG says state not backing down from Shelby Park takeover in Eagle Pass

McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) — As the Friday night deadline approached for a Homeland Security request for the State of Texas to open up Shelby Park in Eagle Pass to federal authorities, the state’s attorney general shot back a letter saying they aren’t backing down.

In a letter Friday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton disputed a claim by DHS officials in a previous letter that federal authorities have rights to Shelby Park lands that were established during the building border barrier in 2008.

“Your own map shows that most of the tracts you reference fall outside the perimeter area secured by Texas at Shelby Park,” Paxton wrote in the three-page letter to DHS General Counsel Jonathan Meyer.

“With respect to parcels identified in your maps that are actually in the vicinity of the park, publicly available records suggest the United States does not even purport to own what your latest letter claims … Based on our necessarily cursory review, current records from Maverick County do not support that claim,” Paxton wrote.

This is the second time Paxton has told federal officials that Texas will not relinquish the border park.

Meyer on Tuesday sent a letter to Paxton demanding access to the park. Border Report obtained a copy of the letter, in which Meyer requested that the state evacuate control of the park by Friday night.

On Jan. 10, Texas National Guard, under command of the state’s Operation Lone Star border security initiative, erected a gate and sealed off the park’s entrance and has not allowed U.S. Border Patrol agents to enter.

The park’s boat ramp is the only public boat ramp for this border town of 28,000 across the Rio Grande from Piedras Negras, Mexico. And it is a popular spot where migrants try to illegally cross from Mexico into South Texas.

In his Tuesday letter, Meyer claimed the City of Eagle Pass had given a “perpetual easement” to federal officials in 2018 of the park’s boat ramp and road leading to the ramp.

Eagle Pass Mayor Rolando Salinas says the city did not ask Texas officials to close Shelby Park on Jan. 10. (Sandra Sanchez/Border Report)

But Paxton wrote: “Texas never approved that transaction,” under the state’s Constitution. “Your federal federal agency cannot have something that was not the City’s to give.”

“This office will continue to defend Texas’s efforts to protect its southern border against every effort by the Biden Administration to undermine the State’s constitutional right of self defense,” Paxton wrote.

Tension between state and federal officials has escalated after the Jan. 12 drowning of a migrant woman and her two young children in the waters near the park, which Border Patrol agents cannot access.

Border Report has asked DHS officials for a response to Paxton’s letter. This story will be updated if information is received.

Sandra Sanchez can be reached at [email protected].