Texas argued that it had not run afoul of that principle. “Under the Supremacy Clause, laws passed within the scope of Congress’s enumerated powers may preempt state laws that conflict with federal mandates,” the state told the justices. “But,” it added, Congress “has never declared that property rights vanish at the border or that they exist solely ‘at the discretion, the behest, and the choice, and the desires of’ federal officials.”
In a reply brief, the Justice Department strenuously urged the justices to reject that position, arguing it could be used in bad faith to obstruct a wide range of governmental functions. “The result of Texas’s position would be that States across the country could invoke their laws to impede the federal government’s exercise of its authority,” the federal government claimed. It also not-so-subtly suggested that Texas’s actions and the lower courts’ ruling sprang mainly from policy differences over border enforcement.
“When Border Patrol agents are vastly outnumbered and face blocked access points and dangerous conditions in the river and on the bank, they must exercise judgment as to the best use of limited resources to apprehend, inspect, and process noncitizens safely and efficiently,” the department claimed, quoting from a prior Supreme Court ruling. “Texas and the lower courts may prefer for Border Patrol to operate differently, but as this Court has ‘repeated time and again, an agency has broad discretion to choose how best to marshal its limited resources and personnel to carry out its delegated responsibilities.’”