HELENA – Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen joined a coalition in support of Texas’s efforts to secure the southern border as the Biden administration’s failure to enforce the law is wreaking havoc on Montana and states across the country.
In a letter sent Monday to President Biden and Secretary of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the attorneys general urged the Biden administration enforce the laws that secure the southern border or allow states to stop the invasion themselves. To prevent illegal border crossings, Texas built physical barriers, some made with concertina wire and placed on Texas landowners’ land with their permission. While a recent Supreme Court order paused an injunction against the federal government keeping it from destroying the wire, it did not order Texas to stop repairing or replacing the wire.
“Governor Abbot’s efforts to secure our border, and Attorney General Paxton’s work defending those efforts, must be supported rather than opposed. We are a nation of laws. And without a border, we would quickly cease to be a nation at all,” the attorneys general wrote. “What you should do is simple: enforce the law and protect the border. If you cannot bring yourselves to enforce the law, get out of the way so Texas can.”
As a result of Texas’s efforts, in some places, illegal border crossings dropped by more than two-thirds. However, in just one month, Border Patrol agents acting on the Biden administration’s orders cut Texas’s border defense wires more than 20 times. In one case, they even used a forklift to raise the wire and usher in more than 300 illegal aliens.
According to Article I, section 10, clause 3 of the Constitution, Texas has a right to defend itself in a crisis, including when they are “actually invaded.” Additionally, the Constitution’s Guarantee Clause requires that the federal government must “protect each [State] against invasion,” but it has failed to do so.
“Millions of people illegally coming into Texas as part of a coordinated assault on the border is an invasion,” the attorneys general wrote. “Nothing in the Constitution stops Texas from stepping up and doing its part to protect itself, and in so doing also protecting States across the country.”
The attorneys general also note that the Biden administration’s border policies and failure to enforce the law have exacerbated the crisis at the border, encouraging millions of people to place themselves in harm’s way of dangerous drug cartels, human traffickers, and other criminals.
“What happens at the border does not stay at the border,” the attorneys general wrote. “Encouraging further illegal immigration from Central America means encouraging a system in which people are drugged, sexually assaulted, and raped—a humanitarian disaster.”
Since President Biden took office, more than six million illegal aliens have crossed the southern border. Dangerous drugs, like fentanyl, are also flowing freely through the border. During the first three quarters of 2023, anti-drug task forces seized nearly two times more fentanyl than they did compared to all of 2022, what had obliterated previous records. Additionally, fentanyl-linked deaths have also increased 1,750 percent since 2017.
Attorney General Knudsen joined attorneys general from Iowa, Utah, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming, and the Arizona State Legislature in sending the letter.
Click here to read the letter.
Earlier this month, Attorney General Knudsen testified at an impeachment hearing against Mayorkas for his refusal to execute federal immigration law and failure to deal with the southern border crisis.
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