This week, the conflict at the southern border became a war between Texas and the DOJ. In December, there were more than 300,000 migrant encounters on the U.S. southern border or roughly the population of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This week, the Texas military department enlisted the National Guard to block the U.S. Border Patrol from accessing two and a half miles of the U.S. Mexico border on the Rio Grande. The state had seized control of the area and put up fencing and razor wire under an emergency declaration signed by Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

By way of explanation, Abbott who has shipped 10s of 1000s of migrants to Democratically run cities posted on X, "We are making clear the Texas will be a tough place to cross." In response to the DOJ petition the U.S. Supreme Court writing, "Texas's new actions demonstrate an escalation of the state's measures to block Border Patrol's ability to patrol or even to surveil the border and be in a position to respond to emergencies." And ask the court to, quote, "restore border patrol's access to the border it is charged with patrolling and the migrants it is responsible for apprehending, inspecting and processing."

Meanwhile, in New York City, the overwhelming number of asylum seekers needing to be housed led to one Brooklyn high school having to switch its students to remote learning so that their high school building could house nearly 2,000 migrants due to bad weather.

Meanwhile, California just became the first state to offer health insurance to all undocumented immigrants under a new expansion of Medi-Cal spearheaded by Governor Gavin Newsom. All low income residents qualify regardless of immigration status, including an estimated 700,000 adults aged 26 to 49 living in the state illegally.

Now back to Texas. There was this written in a recent column in the Houston Chronicle, "The Texas GOP border crisis plan includes secession, surrender and stunts instead of solutions." Chris Tomlinson wrote those words and added, "Abbott is right about one thing, the entire nation must help with the migrants allowed to remain in the United States pending the resolution of their asylum claims. Eagle Pass has a population of 39,000, Del Rio with 34,000 residents cannot accommodate so many families." But he adds, "The governor diminishes his good deed by turning desperate migrants into political pawns."