Officials from several border counties in southern Texas announced Tuesday that they were making an emergency “invasion” declaration to help them deal with Democrat President Joe Biden’s catastrophic border crisis.
At least four Texas counties made the emergency declaration this week, including Kinney Country, Goliad County, Terrell County, and Uvalde County.
“The move aligns with some conservative officials and activists who have privately urged Abbott to begin unilaterally enforcing federal immigration laws,” the Houston Chronicle reported. “Expelling migrants from the country would be unprecedented for the state but justified, they argue, by the Biden administration’s push to expand legal pathways for migrants to enter the country.”
Kinney County Judge Tully Shahan told reporters in Bracketville that part of the reason for making the declaration was because the nation needs to know “that this is real” and that the announcement was “not a photo op.”
“The Biden administration won’t do a thing about it,” Shahan said. “They could stop this thing this hour. They could stop it now. They don’t have the guts.”
Along with not having the resources to deal with the massive influx of illegal aliens pouring into their communities, officials said that the illegal immigration surge has resulted in crime and property damage.
“In my community, we have less than 1,000 residents. The thousand residents everyday live in fear of the invasion,” Dale Lynn Carruthers, the county judge for Terrell County, said. “We are doing the best we can with limited manpower. Terrell County has the least to offer… but we have a lot of border coverage.”
“It’s a nightmare,” Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said. “It needs to stop. The federal government is not going to do it. We’re not doing these people any favors. We’re setting them up for failure. You’re turning them loose with nowhere to go, no jobs, and no work permit.”
Ken Cuccinelli, former Director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, said that using the “self-help provision of the Constitution to declare an invasion … gives the governor, decided similarly, the authority to repeal that invasion.”
Legal scholar Jonathan Turley told Fox News that he does not believe that declaring an invasion will do much.
“As they say in Texas, this dog won’t hunt,” Turley said. “They’re relying on the guarantee clause of Article Four, Section Four, and that deals with an invasion, which is generally interpreted and long interpreted to mean an actual foreign invasion in the form of an army, an organized force.”
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has repeatedly slammed the Biden administration for its poor handling of the crisis on the southern border, which many have said is a direct result of the administration’s policies.
“President Biden was warned in advance that reduced border enforcement would lead to dire consequences, and we have seen those dire consequences,” Abbott said. “The worst thing of all is the catastrophic death that we have witnessed. We saw this horrendous death occur in a truck in San Antonio earlier this week. It is heartbreaking.”