Tipsheet

Abbott Is Doubling Down on Texas' Right to Defend Itself and Enforce the Border

Spencer Brown
Spencer Brown  |  January 24, 2024 2:45 PM

As President Biden escalates the federal government's assault on Texas and the Lone Star State's efforts to secure its border with Mexico after the Biden administration abdicated such responsibilities, Governor Greg Abbott is doubling down on his efforts to enforce the international border and reminding Biden that doing so is within Texas' constitutionally protected rights. 

Reiterating that President Biden has "broken the compact between the United States and the States," Abbott says in a fiery and justifiably defiant statement that "James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and the other visionaries who wrote the U.S. Constitution foresaw that States should not be left to the mercy of a lawless president who does nothing to stop external threats like cartels smuggling millions of illegal immigrants across the border."

The current border crisis caused willfully by Biden's policies, Abbott continues, is "why the Framers included both Article IV, § 4, which promises that the federal government 'shall protect each [State] against invasion,' and Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which acknowledges 'the States’ sovereign interest in protecting their borders.'"

Biden's failure to uphold the federal government's constitutional obligation to protect Texas against invasion has triggered the sovereign interest in protecting its border with Mexico, Abbott explains, "which reserves to this State the right of self-defense."

Previously, as Abbott's statement reminds, the governor declared an invasion and invoked the "constitutional authority to defend and protect itself," an authority that "is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary." 

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It is that authority, Abbott notes, under which the Texas National Guard, Department of Public Safety, and other state officials are acting to secure the Lone Star State's border. 

Further scolding Biden and his administration's inane border policies that have caused a record-setting number of illegal immigrants to stream into the United States, only to be apprehended and then released into the interior while they wait years for an initial court date due to Biden's abuse of the asylum process, Abbott explains that he has put Biden "on notice in a series of letters," including the one he hand-delivered to the president. Still, "President Biden has ignored Texas's demand that he perform his constitutional duties."

More on Biden's intentional border crisis-triggering actions from Abbott's statement: 

• President Biden has violated his oath to faithfully execute immigration laws enacted by Congress. Instead of prosecuting immigrants for the federal crime of illegal entry, President Biden has sent his lawyers into federal courts to sue Texas for taking action to secure the border.

• President Biden has instructed his agencies to ignore federal statutes that mandate the detention of illegal immigrants. The effect is to illegally allow their en masse parole into the United States.

• By wasting taxpayer dollars to tear open Texas’s border security infrastructure, President Biden has enticed illegal immigrants away from the 28 legal entry points along this State’s southern border—bridges where nobody drowns—and into the dangerous waters of the Rio Grande.

"The Executive Branch of the United States has a constitutional duty to enforce federal laws protecting States, including immigration laws on the books right now," Abbott's statement adds. "President Biden has refused to enforce those laws and has even violated them. The result is that he has smashed records for illegal immigration."