Obviously, the situation along the U. S. border with Mexico has gotten a lot worse and ground zero of this crisis is the Texas border. And while most progressive open border enthusiasts would like you to believe that these illegal crossings are populated primarily by the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free”, the reality is much different: According to data from the National Border Patrol Council, over 90% of crossings in the Laredo sector are single men with violent records, and of the over 50,000 apprehensions so far in 2021, almost half are other than Mexicans. The shameful part is that the drug cartels are in almost complete control of the traffic with all that this means in terms of exploitation and inhumane treatment in “stash houses” up and down the border.
Many critics wonder why more cannot be done by local authorities, such as by calling up the Texas National Guard into state service. Tucker Carlson of Fox News went so far as to say that Texas Governor Greg Abbott “strikes me as a total fraud” on border security issues. But the reality is that, under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution as upheld in 2012 by the Supreme Court in a very flawed 5-3 decision in Arizona v. United States, local and state authorities cannot deport illegal aliens and have very little authority beyond a show of deterrence.
However, the dissent in the Arizona case by Justices Scalia, Alito, and Thomas was reasoned and forceful, and I do agree that we could be using their arguments in doing more than we are. As Scalia wrote in dissent, “Today’s opinion…deprives states of what most would consider the defining characteristic of sovereignty: the power to exclude from the sovereign’s territory people who have no right to be here”. Governor Abbott should be willing to openly and aggressively confront the Biden administration and this flawed challenge to our sovereignty as a state.