ANALYSIS/OPINION:
President Biden refuses to fulfill his duty to secure the nation by safeguarding its southern border. With no other recourse, Texas has stepped into the breach to protect its citizens from entrants from foreign lands – many harmless but some infected with COVID-19. Federal authorities have pulled rank and attempted to leave Americans defenseless once again. It is, in the words of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, “a constitutional crisis.” Even more fundamentally, it is a crisis of common sense that Americans won’t abide by.
Texas has become the primary gateway for the surge of border-crossing migrants enticed north by the Biden administration’s open-border policies. Already this year, more than 1 million illegal crossings have been attempted, with most of them occurring in the Del Rio and Rio Grande Valley sectors of Texas.
Biden policy has essentially repurposed U.S. Customs and Border Protection as an ad hoc transit service to whisk new arrivals from the border to processing facilities. Watching his state forced to serve as a coronavirus transportation hub, Mr. Abbott responded last week by first calling for migrants picked up on Texas soil to be arrested for trespassing. Second, by ordering state troopers to block vehicles carrying illegals heading north and return them to the border.
As the top Biden lawman, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has felt the Texas two-step plan for restoring immigration order treading on his toes. Accordingly, he has called on the federal court in El Paso to prevent Texas from interfering with the federal government’s sovereignty over the border. If only the feds grasped that their authority entails securing the well-being of the nation’s citizens.
Mr. Abbott got the message: “It is clear from the arguments in your letter that the State of Texas and the federal government face a constitutional crisis,” he wrote to Mr. Garland.
While the two grapple over control of Texas’s illegal immigrant transit hub, Mr. Biden readies plans to reduce the number of green cards this year handed out to legal immigrants. Additionally, the president and his Democratic allies in Congress hope to cram amnesty for already-present illegals — numbering anywhere between 11 million and 20 million — into their $3.5 trillion social welfare legislation.
It is often said that America is a nation of immigrants. Most understand the cliché is a reference to “legal” immigrants, but Mr. Biden’s administration brushes aside that critical distinction.
It is unsurprising, then, that Americans are increasingly appalled by the president’s handling of the border crisis. An ABC-Ipsos poll conducted in late July found that just 37 percent of respondents approved of his actions to deal with the surge of illegal immigrants, while 63 percent disapproved.
The Biden administration has no other purpose than to preserve the constitutional rights of Americans. In no way does the president safeguard those rights by allowing illegal immigrants, some of whom carry the coronavirus, to swamp the border. His actions defy Texas’ common-sense solutions.
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