(Joshua Paladino, Headline USA) Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich released a legal opinion in which he described the circumstances at the southern border as an “invasion” that gives the state the “power to defend itself,” the Washington Times reported.
The opinion does not have authority unless Gov. Doug Ducey accepts it and issues an executive order that directs the police and national guard to treat as an invasion the illegal immigration, drug and human trafficking, and gang violence.
Brnovich found that the Constitution’s Article I, Section 10 and Article IV, Section 4 authorize Arizona to defend itself against the invasion, though the Constitution reserves the foreign policy power, in most circumstances, to the federal government.
Article I, Section 10 states that states cannot engage in foreign policy “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.”
Brnovich argued that “violence” and “lawlessness” at Arizona’s southern border is “extensive, well-documented, and persistent,” giving it the character of an “invasion” and an “imminent danger” to the state’s citizens.
Foreign states do not need to sponsor an invasion for it to meet the definition.
“As discussed above, ‘actually invaded’ and ‘invasion’ in the State Self-Defense and Invasion Clauses is not limited to hostile foreign states but includes hostile non-state actors,” Brnovich wrote.
Article IV, Section 4 states that the federal government “shall protect each of them [these United States] against Invasion.”
Brnovich said that the United States government must protect the states from invasion, but when the federal government fails to protect them—or even encourages a foreign invasion, as the Biden administration has done—then the states reclaim their right to self-defense.
“Thankfully, the Founders foresaw that States might need to protect themselves from invasion and made clear in the Constitution that States retain the sovereign power to defend themselves within their own territory,” Brnovich wrote in the opinion.
