Texas Governor Greg Abbott received some powerful allies in his fight with the Biden administration over border security. Almost all Republican governors signed on to a statement supporting the state of Texas’s right to self-defense.
“President Biden and his Administration have left Americans and our country completely vulnerable to unprecedented illegal immigration pouring across the Southern border. Instead of upholding the rule of law and securing the border, the Biden Administration has attacked and sued Texas for stepping up to protect American citizens from historic levels of illegal immigrants, deadly drugs like fentanyl, and terrorists entering our country,” the statement said.
There can be no argument about the truth of those statements. The argument made by the White House is that they don’t have the authority to shut down the border. That’s debatable, as Congress readies a bill that would give the president the authority to do just that.
But even without shutting down the border, the Biden administration could be doing a lot more to prevent the illegal alien crush at the border.
“We stand in solidarity with our fellow Governor, Greg Abbott, and the State of Texas in utilizing every tool and strategy, including razor wire fences, to secure the border,” the letter, said. “Because the Biden Administration has abdicated its constitutional compact duties to the states, Texas has every legal justification to protect the sovereignty of our states and our nation.”
The White House immediately shifted the blame to Congress.
“I would say to them that if they truly want to help with the issue at the border, with the immigration system, that they need to talk to the congressional members, the senators in their state,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “They need to ask them to make sure that they have the resources they need within their respective states to take action to actually deal with a broken system.”
Abbott on Wednesday again accused the Biden administration of failing to prosecute migrants for illegally entering the country, ignoring rules surrounding the detention of migrants and “wasting taxpayer dollars to tear open Texas’s border security infrastructure.”
Abbott invoked state’s constitutional right of self-defense in the justifying the patrol tactics and flouting federal guidance, but the U.S. Constitution relegates immigration law to the federal government.
Abbott and his supporters pointed to two provisions: Article 4, Section 4 of the constitution, which states the U.S. will defend states against invasion; and Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3, which bans states from engaging in war “unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay.”
Unarmed women and children coming to the border is not an “invasion,” no matter how many word games Abbott and his supporters want to play. No federal court, including the Supreme Court, would define an “invasion” that way, no matter how politically useful the language is.
And the Constitution and 150 years of legal precedent are squarely on the side of the Biden administration about who’s responsible for border security.
Abbott and the Republican governors know all this. But they’re finding the faux constitutional justification useful politically. It has rallied the GOP behind Texas as no other issue could. And, of course, it has put Donald Trump front and center on an issue that could decide the 2024 presidential election.
KJP, likewise, is playing a gigantic game of “pretend” about the border.
“It is shameful that we continue to see these political stunts and we continue to see these political games,” she said. “It is not safe. It does not help solve the problem. It does not help solve the issue.”
It may not “solve” anything, but the issue wouldn’t even be put before the American people without these “political stunts.”
Biden and the Democrats tried to bury the border crisis and, with the help of most of the media, they almost succeeded. Until Greg Abbott pulled more “political stunts” and sent 100,000 migrants to northern cities where Democratic mayors and allies of Joe Biden were forced to deal with what Texas has been dealing with, the border was a non-issue.
Now, it may cost Biden his job.