Border Fight Gets Major New Player

Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott has a new person in his corner backing his efforts to take border matters into his own hands.

GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations and the one-time governor of South Carolina, said this week that Abbott has every right to fight for his state. She is backing Abbott as he fights multiple legal battles with the Biden administration.

On Thursday, Haley issued a statement that read:

“Governor Abbott is right: the state of Texas has every right to defend itself and its borders. It’s absolutely ridiculous that the President of the United States is trying to stop governors from doing everything they can to protect their citizens.

“But it’s also nothing new; Joe Biden was part of the Administration that sued me when I passed one of the toughest anti-illegal immigration laws in the country as governor of South Carolina.”

Among the many legal fights between the Biden administration and Abbott is legal action the federal government has threatened to take against Texas over razor wire fencing the state set up near Eagle Pass.

There are lawsuits progressing through the court system now after the Biden administration sent people to not only cut the fencing but also remove buoys that Texas set up in the Rio Grande.

Both of those barriers were put in place to deter illegal immigrants from crossing from Mexico into Texas illegally.

The White House won a victory this week when the U.S. Supreme Court granted the emergency appeal that allows federal agents to continue cutting up the border fence.

Another suit filed by the Biden administration revolves around a new state law in Texas that allows local and state officials to arrest immigrants who come into the country illegally. The White House has said that Texas is interfering with the sole control that the federal government possesses over border security and immigration in general.

The Biden administration has further claimed that the law puts both migrants and agents in significant danger.

Abbott has argued that language in the U.S. Constitution states the federal government must “protect each [State] against invasion,” as well as the rights that states have to protect their borders.

Abbott has said that “the failure of the Biden administration” to hold up those duties triggers a clause that’s contained in Article 1 that “reserves to this State the right of self-defense.”

The Texas governor has declared an “invasion” so that authority could be invoked, something he says is “the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary.”

In a statement that he released this week, Abbott said:

“The federal government has broken the compact between the United States and the States. The Executive Branch of the United States has a constitutional duty to enforce federal laws protecting states, including immigration laws on the books right now.

“President Biden has refused to enforce those laws and has even violated them.”