Several Texas counties declared a border “invasion” on Tuesday in a move to pressure the state’s governor to issue a similar declaration.
The statement doesn’t grant the counties any kind of additional legal authority and may not even be legal — but officials hoped it would bring attention to the border crisis.
“We’re being invaded. The facts are there,” said Kinney County Judge Tully Shahan at a press conference in Brackettville, Texas. “This is real. We want America to know this is real. America doesn’t know what’s happening here.”
County officials from Kinney, Goliad, Terrell and Uvalde Counties criticized the Biden Administration for what they called its “open border policy.”
The officials each shared stories of how their communities are being inundated by immigrants as humans and drugs are smuggled through their small towns on a daily basis.
The number of reported migrant encounters along the US-Mexico border once again made history in May — hitting a staggering 239,416 encounters, according to the latest available monthly Customs and Border Patrol statistics.
The counties were contacted by a former President Donald Trump official, Ken Cuccinelli, who has talked them into believing they can use the “self-help provision of the Constitution to declare an invasion.”
“This gives the governor, if he decided similarly, the authority to repeal that invasion,” Cuccinelli said at the press conference today.
The former Trump Department of Homeland Security official claims that now that the Kinney County Attorney, a legal authority has declared an invasion, Gov. Greg Abbott can “repeal” immigrants. He envisions a Title 42-style program, where immigrants– even those seeking asylum– are automatically deported if they cross the Texas border.
The Center for Renewing America has been reaching out to states and counties across the country, looking for any local government that would be willing to go along with it, the spokeswoman for the organization told The Post.
A Fox News legal analyst said this likely wouldn’t survive a court challenge.
“As they say in Texas, this dog won’t hunt. They’re 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,” said Jonathan Turley told Fox News.
In the past, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has resisted calls by the same group to declare an “invasion,” according to the Texas Tribune.