When morality, SCOTUS, and the Federal Government are ALL against you and say you can’t just kill immigrants, then everything is okay in Texas if you declare that it is an invasion!
"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," reads the statement. "President Biden has instructed his agencies to ignore federal statutes that mandate the detention of illegal immigrants. The failure of the Biden Administration to fulfill the duties imposed by Article IV, § 4 has triggered Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which reserves to this State the right of self-defense. For these reasons, I have already declared an invasion under Article I, § 10, Clause 3 to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself. That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary."
Look it’s right here — I can ignore everybody because I’m being invaded!
The real reason for this is buried in the last paragraph of his declaration — to prevent the Texas National Guard from being nationalized:
The failure of the Biden Administration to fulfill the duties imposed by Article IV, § 4 has triggered Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which reserves to this State the right of self-defense. For these reasons, I have already declared an invasion under Article I, § 10, Clause 3 to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself. That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary. The Texas National Guard, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and other Texas personnel are acting on that authority, as well as state law, to secure the Texas border.
If you recall how Eisenhower nationalized the Arkansas National Guard to enforce integration...
Clearly Governor Abbott has planned this as a preemptive countermove to anything Biden does.
Why does this remind me of the Nullification Crisis? Only this time it’s Texas instead of South Carolina, and instead of taxes it’s about killing brown people.
The problem is that Abbott has nowhere to go from here except secession, all because he wants to kill immigrants, and to be the main character in an election year when he’s not even running for President.
Article I, § 10, Clause 3 — whoa, what did he cite?
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.
Here are some annotations from constitution.congress.gov, and I don’t really think it means what he says it means.
ArtI.S10.C3.3.1 Overview of Compact Clause
ArtI.S10.C3.3.2 Historical Background on Compact Clause
ArtI.S10.C3.3.3 Subject Matter of Compacts
ArtI.S10.C3.3.4 Congressional Consent to Compacts
ArtI.S10.C3.3.5 Requirement of Congressional Consent to Compacts
If you squint really hard (and TX attorney general Paxton is good at that), you might be able to proclaim that laws don’t apply to the states if they’re being invaded.