As we noted yesterday here and in the current AIC Foundation newsletter, several counties in Texas bordering Mexico have declared themselves targets of a full-fledged invasion from Mexico. In a July 5 press release, the county leaders, headed by Kinney County judge Tully Shahan, explained their motive this way:
We are taking these steps in hopes of encouraging our Governor to acknowledge the existence of an invasion on our border with Mexico and take the necessary actions to preserve and protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Texas.
Texas Governor Abbott has been carrying on his own protracted wrangle over immigration policy with the Biden White House for a year and a half but had yet to do what the border counties are asking him to do: formally declare an invasion.
Yesterday, Abbott responded. And while still declining to label the incursion with the I-word, he came close, issuing an executive order detailing his complaints against Biden’s polices and in one case using the same wording from the U.S. Constitution as that cited by the counties:
WHEREAS, President Biden’s failure to faithfully execute the immigration laws enacted by Congress confirms that he has abandoned the covenant, in Article IV,§ 4 of the U.S. Constitution, that “[t]he United States … shall protect each [State in this Union] against Invasion,” and thus has forced the State of Texas to build a border wall, deploy state military forces, and enter into agreements as described in Article I, § 10 of the U.S. Constitution to secure the State of Texas and repel the illegal immigration that funds the cartels; [Emphasis added.]
Noting that more than 5,000 migrants were apprehended in Texas over the July 4 weekend, Abbott concluded his order with the following:
I, Greg Abbott, Governor of Texas, by virtue of the power and authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the State of Texas, do hereby authorize and empower the Texas National Guard and the Texas Department of Public Safety to respond to this illegal immigration by apprehending immigrants who cross the border between ports of entry or commit other violations of federal law, and to return those illegal immigrants to the border at a port of entry.
No one is quite sure, once those illegals are brought to the U.S. side of a port of entry, what will happen to them then. Presumably, they would be turned over to the federal Border Patrol at that point to deal with as they are ordered by Washington. Abbott, already opening himself up to federal litigation, stopped short of ordering Texas authorities to forcibly expel the migrants.
In one case just revealed, however, the sheriff of Kinney County, the county that declared the invasion, actually has already done his own “deportation.” On Wednesday of this week, Kinney Sheriff Brad Coe personally drove four illegal migrants and one suspected smuggler one hour to the Eagle Pass port of entry. Sheriff Coe turned the smuggler over to the Border Patrol for arrest and dropped the four migrants off “in the middle of the international bridge.” Which way they went has not been revealed.
Governor Abbott voiced his support of Coe and other local officials having to resort to such unconventional tactics:
I applaud all of our sheriffs for having to respond in unprecedented conditions. And that’s causing all of us to use unprecedented action. And so whether it’s doing what that sheriff in Kinney County is doing, or what we’re doing, such as turning back more than 20,000 people, we all have our own tools and strategies that we use to either turn back or to return people across the border.
Coe and other local officials may face potential legal trouble with the U.S. Department of Justice, which had already announced an investigation of Abbott’s Operation Lone Star looking for the usual “civil rights violations.” The new order is surely to spawn more litigation as well. What it all boils down to is that American citizens and local officials are finding themselves in a two-fold struggle: one against the cartels and illegal migrants and the other against their own federal government. May they prevail in both.
For more on Sheriff Coe’s actions, see the NY Post.