by Joseph Klein
Will the border states assert their constitutional right to protect their lawful residents?
The United States is being invaded by criminal Mexican cartels smuggling hordes of illegal immigrants into the country. The United States is also being invaded indirectly by China, which supplies lethal fentanyl to the Mexican cartels who smuggle the drug across the border, killing many thousands of Americans. Think of it as an undeclared war by the Chinese regime against the American people, aided and abetted by the Mexican cartels.
Several Texas counties declared a border invasion on July 5th in the hope of goading Texas Governor Greg Abbott to end his foot-dragging and make an official declaration of invasion under the Texas and United States Constitutions.
“We’re being invaded. The facts are there,” said Kinney County Judge Tully Shahan at a press conference. His Texas county is located at the U.S.-Mexico border. “This is real.” Judge Shahan blamed the Biden administration for not doing a thing about it. “We’re in over our head," he added. "We need help and we need for Attorney General Ken Paxton and our governor to adopt an invasion under its definition in the constitution. Adopt that invasion and let’s move forward.”
The Biden administration has released more than a million immigrants who were apprehended after managing to enter the United States illegally and has allowed them to stay in the country. This is not counting the so-called “got-aways” who managed to elude apprehension as well as unaccompanied minors still in the U.S.
Mexican cartels who are engaged in smuggling desperate immigrants into the United States are raking in billions of dollars from their criminal human trafficking enterprises. Shadowy figures have organized huge caravans of immigrants, intent on crossing into the U.S. in large groups. Many of the U.S.-bound migrants end up in the hands of the Mexican cartels, who transport their human cargo by the thousands every day into the United States.
In addition to profiting from human trafficking, the Mexican cartels are making money from drug smuggling on the backs of the American people.
“Fentanyl is killing Americans at an unprecedented rate,” said DEA Administrator Anne Milgram earlier this year. “Drug traffickers are driving addiction, and increasing their profits, by mixing fentanyl with other illicit drugs. Tragically, many overdose victims have no idea they are ingesting deadly fentanyl, until it’s too late.”
The Biden administration’s efforts to stop the flow of fentanyl smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico have failed. Its open border policies have caused border agents to focus overwhelmingly on the apprehension, processing, and release of record numbers of illegal immigrants, diverting valuable resources needed to interdict the smuggling of fentanyl before it is too late.
“Instead of admitting error and moving to keep out illegal migrants, Biden has instead moved to process and admit them more quickly,” a Washington Examiner editorial explained last year. “As a result, more keep coming — breaking new records for border apprehensions every month and further burdening border agents. Drug cartels not only know the border patrol is overwhelmed from processing migrants, but they also know how to use it to their advantage. They drop off hundreds of children at the border in the dead of night. When border patrol agents are forced to deploy resources to process them, they race across the border with fentanyl.”
The Washington Examiner editorial pointed to the increasing financial integration of the Mexican drug cartels and Chinese companies who often have ties to the Chinese Communist government. “What better way to weaken and destabilize America than killing its citizens with deadly drugs and degrading its border security?” the Washington Examiner editors asked rhetorically.
Mexican cartel violence has spilled over into the United States. As Texas Department of Public Safety Lt. Chris Olivarez noted last November, “These criminal organizations come across from Mexico to the US side and they kill individuals. They carry out these killings, these horrendous acts of violence and then go back to Mexico.”
Article IV, Section 4 of the United States Constitution provides, “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature or the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.” (Emphasis added)
The Biden administration has knowingly violated these guarantees with its open border policies. Conditions will only get worse with the abandonment of the “Remain in Mexico” program and the likely termination of Title 42 expulsions in the near future.
The legislatures or governors of Texas, Arizona, and other states most affected by the invasive and sometimes violent actions of the human and fentanyl drug smugglers should take advantage of the constitutional guarantee of federal government protection. They should call upon the U.S. government to protect them “against Invasion” and “domestic Violence,” which have been exacerbated by the Biden administration’s refusal to fully enforce the nation’s immigration laws.
But what happens if the Biden administration, as expected, tells these states to pound sand? The Biden administration will insist that the power to regulate immigration lies exclusively in the hands of the federal government, even though the administration has completely dropped the ball.
The administration also will argue that the states are not constitutionally authorized to conduct foreign policy with allies or adversaries, nor are they authorized to wage war. However, Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution makes an exception allowing the states to defend themselves where the states are “actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.”
The border states in particular are being invaded by foreign smugglers. These states are facing the imminent danger of violence and massive drug fatalities as a result. There is no vetting to speak of at the border by federal border agents who are overwhelmed by the sheer number of illegal immigrants crossing into the U.S. every day. The border states face imminent danger from terrorist suspects, murderers, and rapists who enter their states. The border states are also the first points of entry for lethal fentanyl that kills their people.
“Acting as if they are above the law, Mexican and Central American cartels are engaging in brazen attacks on Arizona, trafficking in drugs, weapons, and human beings,” wrote Arizona’s Attorney General Mark Brnovich last February. “The cartels' smuggling of humans and drugs is bringing more violence to the border crossing into the United States…Border area ranchers have experienced this violence firsthand, including one who was killed the day after he reported a drug load to authorities.”
Attorney General Brnovich issued a legal opinion noting that “cartel and gang members are entering Arizona in a hostile manner that attacks, encroaches on, and violates Arizona.” The Attorney General concluded:
“The on-the-ground violence and lawlessness at Arizona’s border caused by cartels and gangs is extensive, well-documented, and persistent. It can satisfy the definition of ‘actually Invaded’ and ‘invasion’ under the U.S. Constitution. Two conclusions flow from this. First, the federal government has a duty to protect Arizona under the Invasion Clause. Second, Arizona retains the independent authority under the State Self-Defense Clause to defend itself when actually invaded.”
“The federal government is failing to fulfill its duty under Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution to defend the States from invasion. The State Self-Defense Clause exists precisely for situations such as the present, to ensure that States are not left helpless.”
Texas and Arizona should band together to challenge the Biden administration’s failure to carry out the federal government’s constitutional duty to protect. They should declare the constitutional right of the states in such circumstances to defend their own lawful residents from invasion and imminent danger. The states unfortunately may face an uphill battle, however, as the courts so far have been reluctant to become involved in what they have characterized as political matters concerning foreign policy and defense. The Supreme Court itself by a slender majority erred in allowing the Biden administration to end the Remain in Mexico program.
Perhaps this time will be different. The border states are being confronted with unprecedented, unchecked, invasive actions conducted by hostile organized criminal enterprises launched from foreign soil into the United States. Unvetted illegal immigrants with violent criminal pasts who are let loose and threaten security in these states pose imminent danger to their lawful residents. So does fentanyl coming from China that is smuggled into the states by the Mexican cartels. The Supreme Court may get the chance to do the right thing this time and rule on behalf of the states trying to protect their own people and territory from the imminent dangers that the Biden administration has intensified.
Joseph Klein
Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/stop-border-invasion-now-joseph-klein/
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