From the Texas House to former President Donald Trump, Republicans around the country defended Gov. Greg Abbott’s challenges to the Biden administration’s border policies.
From the Texas House to former President Donald Trump, Republicans across the country are rallying behind Gov. Greg Abbott’s legal standoff with the federal government at the southern border, intensifying concerns about a constitutional crisis amid an ongoing dispute with the Biden administration. At issue is concertina wire that the Texas National Guard has been using as a barrier between the Rio Grande River and Shelby Park, a 47-acre area in Eagle Pass. In a 5-4 decision earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the Biden Administration when it vacated a lower court’s ruling that prevented Border Patrol agents from cutting the wire to apprehend people who had crossed the river. On Wednesday — and as the Texas National Guard and state troopers continued to roll out the wire and prevent federal agents from accessing much of the park — Abbott continued to publicly challenge the ruling and “hold the line.” He declared that Texas was under an “invasion,” giving the state the constitutional right to defend itself and claimed that President Joe Biden’s practice of paroling migrants into the country amounted to a refusal to enforce current immigration laws. “President Biden has violated his oath to faithfully execute immigration laws enacted by Congress,” Abbott said in a statement. “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.”
Abbott continued, claiming the state’s right to defend itself “is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary.” Abbott’s action is the latest effort by Texas Republicans who have been pushing back against the federal government and trying to take on the role of immigration law enforcement, which is under federal jurisdiction. Abbott’s statement was quickly condemned by some legal scholars, who said it was blatantly unconstitutional and amounted to a usurpring of the federal government. “By this logic, states could use their own determination that an ‘invasion’ exists as a justification for usurping control of whichever federal policies they don’t like,” Stephen Vladeck, a University of Texas at Austin law professor, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Imagine blue states taking this approach: ‘We’re being invaded by drugs.’ ‘We’re being invaded by pollution.’ The right of states to defend themselves does not, and was never meant to, provide a hook for *supplanting* federal authority.” But Abbott’s actions rapidly endeared himself to Republicans across the political spectrum, spanning the country, with many echoing the Texas governor’s call to “hold the line” and others going further using rhetoric that suggested that Texas use force to defend itself from an attack.