Thousands of migrants pour in as extraordinary stand-off erupts between Federal Border Patrol and local forces who don’t trust Biden’s White House to keep out the masses: TOM LEONARD sees troubling echoes of the American Civil War in small-town Texas

Clutching assault rifles, and surrounded by Humvee armoured cars and state police, a group of National Guardsmen in full combat gear stand menacingly next to a gate under a 20ft-high reinforced steel fence.

Given the endless strife along America’s southern frontier a few hundred yards away, it’s not an unexpected sight in this rough-and-ready border town.

But these troops are not facing Mexico. Instead, they’re staring back towards the Texan town of Eagle Pass — and the rest of America.

For this particular display of military muscle isn’t meant to send a signal to the hordes of asylum seekers pouring into the country week after week. Instead, it’s to stop the federal law-enforcement agents of the Biden administration from coming anywhere near.

In an extraordinary development that illustrates both the ferocious political polarisation of the U.S. and the growing rancour surrounding America’s immigration crisis, an armed stand-off between the Texas National Guard and the U.S. Border Patrol has developed in this proudly independent corner of the country.

The remarkable scenes that the Mail witnessed stem from a highly provocative decision this month by Texas’s Republican Governor, Greg Abbott, to order armed troops and police to take control of Eagle Pass’s 47-acre Shelby Park — a critical entry point for undocumented migrants — and freeze out the Border Patrol. Since Biden was elected, Abbott has lambasted the Democrats for doing much to encourage the migration crisis.

During his election campaign, the President vowed to ‘restore [America’s] moral standing in the world and our historic role as a safe haven for refugees and asylum seekers’: music to the ears of Left-wing voters and, fatally, would-be immigrants, too.

Rather than sneak into the U.S. and go into hiding, most migrants know that the first thing they need to do is find a Border Patrolman and request asylum.

They will then be swiftly processed and released into the care of a non-governmental organization. They can legally remain and work in the U.S. until their application is decided — a process that often takes years.