Texas Gov. Greg Abbott spoke out on Wednesday against President Joe Biden’s immigration policies, reiterating Texas’ right to defend its borders.
Abbott claimed the president “has ignored Texas’s demand that he perform his constitutional duties.”
“Under President Biden’s lawless border policies, more than 6 million illegal immigrants have crossed our southern border in just 3 years. That is more than the population of 33 different States in this country. This illegal refusal to protect the States has inflicted unprecedented harm on the People all across the United States,” said the governor in a statement sent to The Dallas Express.
“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 failure of the Biden Administration to fulfill the duties imposed by Article IV, § 4 has triggered Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which reserves to this State the right of self-defense. For these reasons, I have already declared an invasion under Article I, § 10, Clause 3 to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself,” Abbott’s statement continued.
“That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary. The Texas National Guard, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and other Texas personnel are acting on that authority, as well as state law, to secure the Texas border.”
Abbott’s statement comes after the U.S. Supreme Court decision to allow federal agents to continue cutting concertina wire along the Texas-Mexico border.
SCOTUS voted in a 5-4 split decision on January 22 to vacate an injunction from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that prevented federal agents from “damaging Texas’s wire fences while the U.S. Department of Justice prepares a response to Texas’s motion for an injunction pending appeal of the district court’s order,” as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Many Texas officials expressed displeasure with the SCOTUS ruling.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) stated on social media that the Court made an “unconscionable” decision, adding, “Texas should ignore it on behalf of the [Border Patrol Union] agents who will be put in a worse position by the opinion and the Biden administration’s policies.”
Indeed, not long after the SCOTUS decision, the Texas National Guard acted to shore up the wire barrier along the border.
A video posted by Chuck Callesto on Tuesday shows Texas National Guard soldiers installing additional wire at Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, which the agency recently seized.
Ali Bradley, a correspondent for News Nation, explained that the SCOTUS ruling allows federal agents to cut the wire but does not prevent the state from installing more, adding that she has been “[s]eeing more razor wire vs concertina wire down there.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a news release on Monday that the state will continue the legal battle to prevent agents from cutting the wire, with arguments expected to be heard by the Fifth Circuit Court on February 7.