Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis backed Texas on April 17 in its attempt to “enforce federal laws” amid a massive influx of illegal immigrants, stressing that states have “every right” to do such a thing.
“They'll say the federal government is supreme when it comes to immigration, which is fine. But here’s the thing—if the federal government has a law and they have constitutional authority to enact that law, then for a state to come and do the opposite, that violates the supremacy clause of the Constitution,” Mr. DeSantis said during an April 17 event where he signed an “anti-communist education” bill into law. “But that’s not what’s happening with Texas. We have laws on the books that the federal government isn’t enforcing, and in fact, they’re intentionally violating.”
“And so all Texas is saying is we want to enforce the federal laws. We want to uphold. ‘Biden, you won’t uphold your oath of office. We'll do it.’ I think states have every right to do that.”
Mr. Abbott insists he is forced to undertake stringent measures as President Joe Biden refuses to defend the nation.
However, the Biden administration has failed to fulfill the requirement of Article IV, Section 4, which has triggered Article I, Section 10, Clause 3, Mr. Abbott said.
“For these reasons, I have already declared an invasion under Article I, Section 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,” he stated.
“President Biden has instructed his agencies to ignore federal statutes that mandate the detention of illegal immigrants. The effect is to illegally allow their en masse parole into the United States.”
March 8 was the third anniversary of Operation Lone Star, Texas’s multi-agency effort to deal with the border crisis. During this period, the operation has led to 503,800 illegal immigrant apprehensions and more than 40,400 criminal arrests, with more than 36,100 felony charges.
This number rose to 2.37 million in fiscal year 2022 and then to 2.47 million in 2023. For the first six months of this fiscal year, 1.34 million encounters have already been registered. Between October 2021 and March 2024, the total number of encounters stands at more than 7.9 million illegal immigrants.
Criminals and Communists
In his speech, Mr. DeSantis commented on illegal immigrants “coming from all over the world,” noting that “we have no idea who these people are.”“Look at, like Maduro, he’s released people from prison and sent them to the southern border,” he said. “You look at the people coming from the Middle East. You look at the people. How do we have tens of thousands of people coming from communist China showing up at our southern border? Really?
“So I think it’s been a huge, huge disaster, but it’s intentional.”
He said that President Biden instituted policies that have “created this mess to begin with.”
The report claimed that such prisoners included those convicted of rape, murder, and extortion.
She pointed to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which is setting up shop in New York City. Members of the gang recruit illegal immigrants, employing them for theft or roughing up the city’s citizens. In Chicago, criminals are enlisting illegal aliens to raid luxury stores, she wrote.
Illegal immigrants from China are also a major concern. According to CBP data, there were a little more than 23,000 border encounters nationwide with Chinese illegal aliens in fiscal year 2021. This more than doubled to close to 53,000 in fiscal year 2023. In the first six months of this fiscal year, there have already been nearly 42,000 encounters.
In a February interview with NTD, a sister media outlet of The Epoch Times, Mr. Marshall said he still hadn’t received a response to the letter.
“What we simply asked of DHS was: Where are these people? Who are they? What’s their background?” he said.
Mr. Marshall warned that some of the Chinese illegals have ties with the Chinese communist regime’s army.
