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Written by Piero Messina
“Houston, we’ve had a problem.” In the corridors of the White House you can feel the same area of fear that NASA scientists felt in the dramatic days of the Apollo 13 space mission. Because, as an anonymous White House source confessed to a mainstream media, “If we lose the presidential elections of 2024 will be because of the southern border, not because of Ukraine.” That prophecy is coming true.
In Texas, the migration crisis at the Mexican border is taking shape, a new American constitutional crisis. Since Joe Biden became president of the United States, more than six million illegal migrants have crossed the border between Mexico and Texas. An unsustainable situation even for Lone Star State . And now the judges of 26 Republican-led states also side with the Texan governor Greg Abbot and sent a letter to the White House last Monday explaining their reasons. The 26 Republican attorneys general tell President Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that they support the Lone Star State, saying that “millions of people illegally coming into Texas as part of a coordinated assault on our border is an invasion” and that “states must be able to defend themselves from invasion.”
Attorneys General Brenna Bird of Iowa and Sean Reyes of Utah, who led the Monday letter, note that since Biden’s inauguration day in 2021, more than 6 million illegal immigrants have crossed the southern border. “That is effectively adding the population of Iowa and Utah to our country in less than three years,” they said. “The invasion on our southern border has made every state a border state,” Bird told Fox News Digital in a statement. “If the Biden Administration won’t do its job to secure our border and keep Americans safe, it should step aside to let the States do the job for them,” she said.
“Texas’ fight is our fight,” Attorney General Reyes told Fox News Digital. “And if the White House will not defend our laws and innocent citizens, states have the authority under the U.S. Constitution to defend themselves,” he said.
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It is still too early to say whether the crisis will be defused in time or whether it is really destined to explode but in the last few hours the evolution has been very rapid. And everything takes a turn for the worse. Also because Donald Trump and much of the Republican entourage have decided to hit Biden and the Democrats right on the exposed nerve of illegal immigration, defined as an “invasion”.
Immigration thus becomes the heart of the electoral campaign. Trump mobilized caravans of truck drivers who, under the banner of the “Let’s take back our border” movement, gathered in three locations in California, Arizona and Texas and then converged towards Eagle Pass.
The trigger for the clash with the federal government are immigration control policies. Governor Greg Abbott has “isolated” the border with Mexico with barbed wire that runs for almost 50 kilometers in an attempt to reduce illegal entries. However, the Federal Supreme Court rejected the measure, inviting the federal agency that deals with border control to remove the barrier, supporting the White House’s line.
But Texans are rough people and the governor of Texas has made it known that he has no intention of complying with the decision. Indeed, not only did he promise more barbed wire, but he also strengthened border patrols conducted by the National Guard and citizen militias. The disobedient Southern state has already received the solidarity of other Republican-led states who say they are ready to send their national guards. Abbott reiterated Texas’ right to “defend itself from invasion,” adding that President Joe Biden is violating existing immigration law. According to Abbott, some soldiers are already arriving and he said he is ready to go to battle with the federal government. The governor of Texas also activated the art. 1 of section 10, paragraph 3 of the US Constitution, which allows martial law to be declared in the State and to be acted upon without regard to the federal government.
Thus, to give the force of law to his decision, the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, signed a law that will allow local police to arrest irregular migrants arriving from Mexico, with powers that until now belonged to federal authorities.
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The law will come into force next March and will most likely face appeals: in the United States the application of immigration law is a federal responsibility, but the Texas government has long accused the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden of not doing enough to control the southern border of Texas, more than 3 thousand kilometers long. “Biden’s deliberate inaction has left Texas to fend for itself,” Abbott said at a news conference set up on the border. The law, known as SB4, will allow any Texas law enforcement officer to stop and arrest migrants arriving from Mexico. Migrants can then be accused of a new crime, created by this law, for having entered Texas irregularly: the penalties range from 6 months to 20 years in prison. The law also allows Texas state courts to order arrested people to return to Mexico: in this case too, those who do not comply with the order issued by the judge risk up to 20 years in prison.
Arrivals of illegal migrants in Texas have increased especially since the expiration of “Title 42”, a part of the immigration law introduced by former President Donald Trump that allowed for rapid rejections, while maintaining some flexibility on the number of attempts could have been carried out to cross the border.
Irregular border crossing is already a crime under federal law, but it happens quite frequently that federal authorities do not prosecute irregular migrants until their second offense, effectively admitting into the country many people who cross the border for first time, especially women and children. On this basis, Abbott and other Republicans have accused the Biden administration of not enforcing immigration law.
The new law does not allow migrants seeking asylum to avoid arrest or trial unless their asylum request has already been granted, which can take years.
The future of the States and the fate of the 2024 presidential election campaign therefore passes through Texas, the country where “everything is bigger”.
