Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s aggressive actions to protect his state’s border and its citizens from a flood illegal migrants is justified under the Constitution of the United States.
Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 explains that the states have a sovereign interest in protecting their own borders from invasion. That right is elevated where a President such as Joe Biden deliberately abdicates his own sworn duty under Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution to protect the states against invasion.
This invites a pivotal question: does our ongoing crisis constitute an invasion? Dictionaries are often a helpful place to begin. Oxford Languages defines it as “an incursion by a large number of people” and “an unwelcome intrusion into another’s domain.” Merriam-Webster offers similar descriptions.
But common sense provides a better answer. It tells us that America has been experiencing a calamitous invasion since the moment Joe Biden took office. By executive fiat, he opened our souther border with almost no restrictions or proper vetting. In a presidential debate, he literally invited people to come here illegally.
Since Biden’s inauguration, more than 8 million foreigners have overrun our previously secure barriers by breaking the law, which makes it a federal offense to come here illegally (18 USC 1325 and 1326).
The result of Joe’s insane policy has been an onslaught of armed gangs, violent criminals, human traffickers, drug cartels that are terrorists, and smugglers armed with deadly fentanyl. Every single day Americans are being harmed with home intrusions and assaults, property damage, thefts, deadly drugs that are killing close to 100-thousand young people each year, and cities utterly overwhelmed.
So, yes, this resembles a de facto invasion aided and abetted by Joe Biden himself.
Beyond the Constitution, Texas has an additional legal right to enforce its border because it is against state law to enter Texas illegally. Hence, Abbott is duty-bound to enforce his own state laws to halt migrants at the southern border, arrest, prosecute, and/or deport those who violate Texas law. The lives and property of his citizens are in imminent danger.
Some have suggested that the “Supremacy Clause” in Article VI, Clause 2 of the Constitution gives Biden greater authority and priority over Texas in matters of border security. But that is not true. The Supremacy Clause applies only when federal law competes with state law.
Here the federal statute noted above is nearly identical to Texas law in prohibiting the illegal entry of migrants. Instead of conflicting, these laws compliment each other. Moreover, Biden’s decision to forsake enforcement of the U.S. Criminal Codes means the Texas law is competing with nothing but inaction. This has created a jurisprudential void that Abbott is compelled to fill.
Joe Biden keeps insisting that Republicans are to blame for not passing the immigration bill he proposed at the outset of his presidency. He claims his legislation would immediately solve the crisis. That’s absurd.
If you actually read his proposal, the exact opposite is true. Biden’s bill does nearly nothing to stop illegal entry because it is little more than a thinly-disguised amnesty bill that would legalize overnight the millions who have come here by breaking the law.
The deception is betrayed in its title called, The U.S. Citizenship Act. If passed, the measure would grant automatic citizenship to all illegal migrants. This would incentivize millions more to surge across our southern border in an unsustainable foreign invasion.
Gov. Greg Abbott should be commended for exercising the legal integrity that President Biden so conspicuously lacks.
