Texas Governor Abbott tells Biden – if you don’t enforce border laws, I will: Republican invokes invasion clause to send GUN BOATS to the border, build a wall, work with foreign countries on security and designate cartels as terrorists
- Texas Governor Greg Abbott sent a letter to President Joe Biden on Wednesday
- ‘Texans are paying the price for your failure’ at the border,’ he wrote
- He told Biden he was invoking a Constitutional clause supposedly allowing states to act with sovereign powers in the event of an ‘invasion’
- Abbott released a list of action points he would take on Twitter the day before
- They include sending deadly gunboats to the border and entering security ‘compacts’ with other states that feel the same way
- It’s not clear how many of Abbott’s proposals he can legally implement
Texas Governor Greg Abbott invoked a Constitutional clause on Wednesday warning President Joe Biden that the Lone Star state would go rogue to defend itself from what he calls a migrant ‘invasion’ at the southern border.
The Republican leader said he’d use the clause and sign executive orders on deploying armed boats along the border, constructing a wall, and working with foreign governments on Texas’ security – among other controversial points.
The clause, found in Article I Section 10 of the Constitution, forbids individual states from unilateral military action ‘unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.’
A record surge in asylum-seekers attempting to cross into the US through Mexico under the last two years of Biden’s term has strained the US federal immigration system, while communities at the border buckle under the influx and shelters are overwhelmed.
Republicans have blamed the president for rolling back controversial Trump-era immigration policies, and Washington’s delay in passing comprehensive immigration reform has only led to more gridlock between red border state governments, the leaders of some Democrat-run cities and the White House.
Abbott took it a step further on Wednesday with a letter to Biden telling him that ‘Texans are paying the price for your failure’ at the border and the Democrat’s policies have led to ‘catastrophic consequences.’
Texas Governor Greg Abbott wrote to President Joe Biden on Wednesday to formally inform him of his intent to invoke the Constitution’s ‘invasion clause’
He accused Biden (posing with US troops in Hawaii on Nov. 15) of ‘inaction’ amid a growing border crisis
‘Your silence in the face of our repeated pleas is deafening. Your refusal to even visit the border for a firsthand look at the chaos you have caused is damning,’ the searing note went on.
‘Two years of inaction on your part now leave Texas with no choice but to escalate our efforts to secure our State.’
It ended with: ‘Your open-border policies, which have catalyzed an unprecedented crisis of illegal immigration, are the sole cause of Texas having to invoke our constitutional authority to defend ourselves.’
Abbott told Biden the founders who crafted the Constitution and that particular invasion clause ‘foresaw your failures.’
‘It reflects an understanding by our Founders, the authors of the Constitution, that some future President might abandon his obligation to safeguard the States from an extraordinary inflow of people who have no legal right of entry,’ the letter states.
DailyMail.com has reached out to the White House for comment.
Aerial view of migrants camping on the banks of the Rio Bravo river (or Rio Grande river, as it is called in the US) in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico, taken on November 15, 2022
Migrants camp on the banks of the Rio Bravo river photographed on November 15
Abbott announced his intent to invoke the clause on Tuesday, along with a list of controversial enforcement proposals
Before sending the letter, Abbott took to Twitter on Tuesday declaring that he ‘invoked the Invasion Clauses of the U.S. & Texas Constitutions to fully authorize Texas to take unprecedented measures to defend our state against an invasion.’
The list includes deploying the National Guard and Texas Department of Public Safety to arrest migrants and send them back across the border – it’s not clear if asylum-seekers are included.
He also wants to ‘build a wall in multiple counties on the border,’ ‘deploy gun boats to secure the border,’ and designate Mexican-based drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations – something that only the federal government can do.
Abbott also called for entering security ‘compacts’ with other states and ‘enter into agreements with foreign powers to enhance border security.’
The post mirrors a separate letter Abbott sent to county judges along the Texas-Mexico border on Monday in which he vowed to take executive action and invoke the clause.
‘Texas has devoted more than $4 billion of Texas taxpayer dollars toward these and other efforts to secure the border and enhance public safety,’ the letter stated of the collective initiatives.
Last month there were 230,678 recorded encounters between undocumented migrants and Border Patrol officers, the most recent data show. That’s a slight increase from September.
More than 2.3 million migrants were arrested along the southern border last fiscal year, the highest recorded number in US history.
