Supporting lawmakers in Texas who are defending their state’s sovereignty from the ongoing invasion of illegal immigrants, attorneys general representing 26 Republican-led states sent a letter on Monday demanding that the Biden administration simply enforce the law and protect the border.
The letter painted a dire picture of the border crisis and the severity of the “invasion” of illegal aliens entering the nation, stating that since President Biden took office “more than six million illegal immigrants have crossed the southern border. That is effectively adding the population of Iowa and Utah to our country in less than three years.”
Sharing their “unique perspective and expertise in law enforcement and border related issues,” the attorneys general continued in the letter, “Governor Abbott’s efforts to secure our border, and Attorney General Paxton’s work defending those efforts must be supported rather than opposed. We are a nation of laws. And without a border, we would quickly cease to be a nation at all.”
The attorneys general defended Texas’ border protection efforts under Operation Lone Star, citing that the state did not violate the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling. They added that “States have an independent duty to defend against invasion.”
Regarding the current lawsuit, Department of Homeland Security v. Texas, the letter listed the lengthy history covering the legal dispute between the federal government and Texas over the border crisis. In the ongoing case, “the district court found that the federal government was ignoring its duty to protect the border and that many of its arguments were cynical and disingenuous,” wrote the attorneys general.
Citing the potential threat to national security with the influx of millions of people illegally coming into Texas, the letter stated, “no one — not Texas, not the United States — knows whether any person illegally crossing the border is engaging in additional criminal activity. For example, the New York Times reports that an ‘increasing number of [illegal] migrants arrested at the southern border over the past year are on the United States’ terrorist watch list.’”
The letter continued,
The federal government should be working to stop this crisis, but it is not. And the Constitution’s Guarantee Clause requires that the federal government do so. It must “protect each [State] against invasion.” But it has abandoned its duty. Nothing in the Constitution stops Texas from stepping up and doing its part to protect itself, and in so doing also protecting States across the country. To those that contend this power belongs only in Congress, they should take that up with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who stands with Texas. By following the Constitution, Texas is doing what the federal government has failed to do.
The attorneys general blamed the Biden administration for “impeding Texas’s attempts to enforce the law.” Adding, “It is this Administration’s deliberate refusal to enforce immigration law — indeed, its deliberate subversion of that law to grant to illegal immigrants benefits to which they are legally barred — that has encouraged millions of people to place themselves in hock to murderous criminal cartels; at the mercy of rapists; and into the hands of modern-day slavers, as these sex- and child-traffickers are more properly called.”
Texas has been defending its state’s sovereignty under Operation Lone Star by building the contested barriers to secure its 1,200-mile border against invasion. As the letter shared:
States must be able to defend themselves from invasion. No one seriously contests that point. Article I, section 10, clause 3 lays out the circumstances that States may act to defend themselves in a crisis — including when they are “actually invaded.” Justice Scalia said it best in his dissent in Arizona v. United States: States have a “sovereign interest in protecting their borders.
The attorneys general closed their letter with a simple request of the Biden administration, asking it to “enforce the law and protect the border,” adding, “If you cannot bring yourselves to enforce the law, get out of the way so Texas can.”
The letter was sent one day before the House Committee on Homeland Security was to meet on proceeding with articles of impeachment against Alejandro N. Mayorkas, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), for high crimes and misdemeanors, all related to his actions and decisions on securing the border.
Attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming, along with the leadership of the Arizona State Legislature, signed the letter.
