On Tuesday, several border counties in the state of Texas issued a joint statement declaring that the ongoing crisis on the southern border, with hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens flooding into the country, is equivalent to an “invasion.”
As reported by the New York Post, the statement was released by officials from four counties: Goliad, Kenney, Terrell, and Uvalde. In the statement, the counties all slammed Joe Biden’s “open border policy,” which they said directly contributed to the crisis.
“We’re being invaded. The facts are there,” said Kinney County Judge Tully Shahan. “This is real. We want America to know this is real. America doesn’t know what’s happening here.”
Other officials from the four counties each told stories about the effects on their communities from the massive influx of illegals, as well as the increase in drug trafficking through their towns as a result. In the month of May, the flood of illegals set a new record for monthly totals, with 239,416 recorded encounters, the highest in modern history.
The county officials were joined by Ken Cuccinelli, the former director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under the Trump Administration. Cuccinelli told them that by declaring an invasion, they could utilize the “self-help provision of the Constitution to declare an invasion.”
“This gives the governor, decided similarly, the authority to repel that invasion,” Cuccinelli continued.
However, some disagreed with Cuccinelli’s assessment over the possible role of the government in the event that the crisis is considered an invasion. Jonathan Turley said that the counties are “relying on the guarantee clause of Article Four, Section Four, and that deals with an invasion, which is generally interpreted and long interpreted to mean an actual foreign invasion in the form of an army, an organized force.”