In an Austin, Texas, federal courthouse on Tuesday, the Biden administration squared off against the Abbott administration in the battle over border sovereignty: Texas Governor Greg Abbott believes we have it; President Joe Biden believes otherwise.

At issue is whether a 1,000-foot string of large, floating, ball-shaped buoys, which Abbott ordered to be placed in the Rio Grande at Eagle Pass in order to deter illegal immigration into Texas, could remain in place.

An Austin-based district court judge, a Reagan appointee named David J. Ezra, ruled that the barrier must go because it didn’t ask “pretty please” of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

We kid you not. As the Texas Tribune reports: “In issuing a preliminary injunction to remove the barrier, Ezra wrote, ‘Governor Abbott announced that he was not "asking for permission” for Operation Lone Star, the anti-immigration program under which Texas constructed the floating barrier. Unfortunately for Texas, permission is exactly what federal law requires before installing obstructions in the nation’s navigable waters.’“

As the Tribune continued, "The Justice Department said in its lawsuit that Texas didn’t receive the necessary authorization for the structure from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and that the barrier obstructs navigation on the Rio Grande.”

Governor Abbott was rightly incensed:

“Today’s court decision merely prolongs President Biden’s willful refusal to acknowledge that Texas is rightfully stepping up to do the job that he should have been doing all along,” Abbott said. “This ruling is incorrect and will be overturned on appeal. We will continue to utilize every strategy to secure the border, including deploying Texas National Guard soldiers and Department of Public Safety troopers and installing strategic barriers.” He added: “Our battle to defend Texas’ sovereign authority to protect lives from the chaos caused by President Biden’s open border policies has only begun. Texas is prepared to take this fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

In better news, a U.S. appeals court yesterday granted a temporary stay on Ezra’s ruling, meaning that the border barrier can remain in place until further adjudication.

This, of course, isn’t the Biden administration’s first attempt to thwart the border-security efforts of a Republican governor. As we wrote in December: “As if we needed additional proof that Joe Biden is unserious about — indeed, even hostile toward — border security, we need only look at the lawsuit filed last week by the Biden Justice Department against [then-Arizona Republican Governor] Doug Ducey, whose administration [had] been using shipping containers to build a makeshift wall along the state’s border with Mexico.”

How intent is the Biden administration on keeping the border open, and how unserious are its arguments for doing so? This intent, and this unserious: The Biden DOJ claimed that Ducey’s makeshift barrier trespasses on federal property. “Arizona has unlawfully and without authority failed to remove the shipping containers from lands owned by the United States or over which the United States holds easements, thereby damaging the United States,” the lawsuit argues.

You read that right: Restricting the flow of illegals into our country is “damaging the United States.”

Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times reported on yet another desperate measure from the open-borders zealots within the Biden administration: a plan to force some illegal immigrant families “to remain near the border in Texas while awaiting asylum screening, effectively limiting their ability to travel within the United States.”

Why might they do that? Our guess is that it’s designed to keep Governor Abbott from continuing to bus thousands of illegals out of Texas and into Democrat-run sanctuary cities such as LA, New York, Chicago, and DC.

Sanctuary, you see, doesn’t mean what it used to mean.

“Of course the illegals are destroying America,” said Fox News’s Laura Ingraham, “but so are the rest of Biden’s policies. So why doesn’t [New York City Mayor Eric] Adams take his message to Washington, to the White House? Why doesn’t he ask to reinstate ‘remain in Mexico,’ immediate deportations?”

Strange, but we seem to remember another such policy that worked remarkably well at stemming the tide of illegals — but that policy was called “Remain in Mexico,” engineered by the hated Trump administration, and so the Biden administration fought all the way to the Supreme Court to have it overturned.

There will be no shortage of reasons for informed citizens to cast their ballots for Republican candidates next November, but one of the biggest reasons is surely border security. The ongoing test case has been plain to see since 2017: Our southern border was secure under President Donald Trump, and it isn’t under President Joe Biden.

As Newt Gingrich points out in his new book, Beyond Biden: Rebuilding the America We Love, a rational border policy is one that “prioritizes the well-being and happiness” of the American people rather than that of illegal immigrants.

Power-mad Democrat racists, though, don’t see these massive waves of poor and unskilled illegals as the reason for a humanitarian mission. Instead, they see these brown and black border-crossers as future government dependees and future Democrat voters.

And that’s all we need to remember about the Democrats’ motivations.