It’s Time for President Biden to Take Back Control of the Texas Border

MAGA Republican immigration policy is no longer just a series of cynical, cruel, ill-considered, half-baked, ham-fisted, pig-headed political stunts, although it remains all of those things. It is now at the center of two serious-as-a-heart-attack threats to U.S. national security—threats that are themselves each potentially more grave than the chronic problems with immigration that are their ostensible cause.

On Wednesday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that he would effectively ignore a U.S. Supreme Court decision that correctly observed that the Constitution gives the U.S. federal government authority over our borders. The justices ruled that Texas could not deny access to the border for federal officials who sought to remove concertina wire that Texas had put in place to make entry into the U.S. more difficult and, consequently, more dangerous for migrants seeking to enter the U.S. illegally.

Subsequently, Abbott announced that since the federal government had in his eyes failed in its responsibility to defend the borders, that an “invasion” of immigrants was threatening Texas, and that he was within his rights as governor to institute his own measures to defend the state.

The action was among the most serious direct threats to the legal principles that hold the U.S. federal system together since the darkest days of the U.S. civil rights movement when, for example, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus sought to reject the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education ruling that required racial integration of U.S. schools.

Then as now, not only was Faubus wrong as a matter of policy, he posed a challenge to our system so grave that it required the President of the United States to act to reassert control and to defend the foundational idea embodied in Article VI of the U.S. Constitution which states: “This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.”

President Joe Biden speaks with U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in El Paso, Texas, on Jan. 8, 2023.

Jim Watson / Getty

President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican and no one’s idea of a radical, responded in the case of Faubus’ rejection of the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decision requiring school integration by assuming control of the Arkansas National Guard, sending in the 101st Airborne Division and thereby reasserting by force federal ability to enforce the laws as required by the Constitution.

Abbott is now putting the Biden administration in a position where it must consider similarly decisive action. Whether that means federalizing the national guard or sending in troops or both, Abbott’s rejection of the authority of the U.S. government cannot be allowed to stand.

Migrants, prepare to cross the Rio Grande in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico on Jan. 2, 2024.

David Peinado / Getty

That is the case not just because Biden and the officials of the federal government have an obligation to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. It is also vital because if Abbott is allowed to continue to defy the law of the land, the precedent it would set could effectively enable any governor to “determine” that the federal government was failing to fulfill its responsibilities as that state official might see them, and thereby to reject federal authority and impose their own policies and programs.

This could mean states establishing their own foreign policy—their own relations with our neighbors, their own immigration law—or, for that matter, their own policies on any other issue where they disagree with U.S. laws, regulations, or court rulings. Given disparities between the views of some red state governors on issues like abortion or free speech—or even how tax revenues are to be distributed—it is easy to imagine the chaos that would ensue.

Further, of course, Abbott’s disregard for the Constitution echoes that of Donald Trump and many others in the MAGA movement—and it would be perilous to allow such attacks on the system to spread or be seen as effective. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, himself allegedly an attorney, stated that he supported Abbott’s position, and Republican leaders—apparently at the direct request of the party’s presumptive presidential nominee—have put the brakes on efforts to reach a compromise with Democrats on immigration policy.

This is significant not just in terms of the benefits such policies might bring about, but because the GOP had previously made passing such laws a precondition for approving President Joe Biden’s supplemental budget request—which includes aid for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and other vital national security priorities.

Trump’s rationale in blocking a deal is that he did not want to give President Biden a “victory” on immigration prior to the election.

Trump and the MAGA right are apparently so committed to running on the idea that inadequate progress has been made on immigration that they are willing to block any such progress. Which is a kind of political logic so sick that it could only have come from the GOP—since they are, after all, the party that played a central role blocking the most sweeping immigration reform proposals in modern U.S. history, even though they were conceived and presented by a Republican president, George W. Bush.

U.S. Border Patrol agents cut an opening through razor wire on Sept. 27, 2023 in Eagle Pass, Texas.

John Moore / Getty

You might get the impression that Republicans think having an immigration problem is more important to their prospects than actually advancing an immigration solution. And recent history suggests you would be right.

That said, their cynicism is not only a danger to the U.S. because we do indeed face major challenges at our border. It is also one because if, as some in the MAGA movement including its leader obviously hope, no progress on immigration also means no progress toward providing Ukraine with vital aid that it needs, these actions will be responsible for a genuine national security catastrophe.

Without needed aid, Ukraine will become increasingly vulnerable to Russian attacks and the gains Kyiv has made against the invaders will be reversed—which would not just put Ukraine in great peril, but would put all of Europe, all of NATO at risk of what an emboldened Russia might do next.

That in turn, is likely to lead not to the “peace” that foreign policy nitwits like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) insist will follow a U.S. abandonment of support for Ukraine. Rather, it will ramp up the Russian threat that will be more costly to defend against, and in the event Russia were to take action against a NATO ally, might require that U.S. troops be put in harm’s way. (To say nothing of the consequences of China seeing this U.S. collapse and interpreting that as a sign that we would be unable or unwilling to help defend Taiwan.)

So, you see, the actions of Trump, Abbott, Johnson, Greene, and the rest of the GOP that they control have grown so egregious that, at this minute, they threaten the sinews by which the republic is held together, the principles on which it was founded, and the means by which we may defend ourselves against our most menacing enemies.

It is not that they have become serious people overnight. Quite the contrary. Our problem is that such unserious and profoundly irresponsible leaders currently pose the gravest risks to the United States that we face from anywhere in the world.