() The standoff at the southern border between Texas, which seeks to enforce immigration law, and federal agents attempting to impose the Biden administration’s open-border policies has triggered what some consider to be a possible secession crisis.
Forget the electoral map, let’s see your Civil War map #LoneStarRebellion #CivilWar #TXNationalGuard #TexasStrong pic.twitter.com/3meDci2fPV
— Doc™️ (@Cosmic_Vertigo) January 25, 2024
Red states have rallied in support, pleding to send National Guardsmen to help Texas Gov. Greg Abbott hold the line. But notably absent among them is North Carolina, whose Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper finds himself at odds with the GOP supermajority in the General Assembly.
Republicans in the state House of Representatives on Wednesday sent a letter to Cooper, calling on him to work with Abbott in support of border security.
“This is his chance to do the right thing,” said House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland. “If not, we’ll be back in short session in a couple of months and we’ll take action to mandate it.”
The letter, signed by all 72 House Republicans, asked that Cooper:
- assign additional North Carolina National Guardsmen with the Texas National Guard to secure the border
- take action to lessen the state as a place to attract migrants
- require law enforcement cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Moore, who is currently running for the U.S. House of Representatives to replace retiring Democrat Rep. Jeff Jackson, witnessed the border crisis firsthand when he visited guardsmen last year in Eagle Pass, Texas.
He said there were 125 guardsmen assigned to U.S. Customs and Border Protection who were “under ineffectual federal authority,” and he requested that they be switched to assignment with Texas.
“This is a clear and present danger to our country,” Moore said at a press conference announcing the letter to Cooper.
“Why is the state Legislature weighing in? Because North Carolina is now a border state,” he continued. “They’re not staying in Texas. They’re moving all across the country.”
Moore noted from his trip to the border that detainees offering spurious asylum claims were given some money and told to come back in five years for a court date.
“It’s a joke,” he said.
He also said drugs of all types were coming through. Traffickers often rely on the use of a diversion: a large group crossing where there is no wall or barrier, which takes border resources while cartel members with drugs enter at another point.
Rep. Donna McDowell, R-Johnston, said during the press conference that through law enforcement at various levels, school administrators and parents, she had learned that fifth-graders were vaping with drugs that traced back to Mexican cartels.
“It’s four times as strong as the marijuana” that might be found or grown domestically, she said. “Kids are going home drunk and high. It tracks back to the cartels.”
Moore said the issue of immigration enforcement was not a Republican talking point, and that both Democrats and those unaffiliated with the two major political parties were talking about the situation.
However, he left no doubt the current crisis was a direct result of President Joe Biden’s decisions.
“The federal government is not enforcing the border laws,” Moore said. “The Biden administration has utterly failed to secure our border.”
Nine months from Election Day and just under five weeks from the state’s primaries, the border has become a top issue on the campaign trail and recently supplanted the inflationary economy as voters’ top concern, according to The Hill.
The letter and press conference came one day after a committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, for the first time in 150 years, recommended two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for “willful and systematic” refusal to enforce immigration law.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 371,036 illegal crossings in December. In 2021, the same month’s report was 73,414. That’s a 405% jump. The datasets do not include gotaways, a term for those who cross and evade capture and for which statistics are not publicly reported.
The Center Square, through sources, has reported those numbers for more than two years. From Jan. 1, 2021, to Sept. 30, 2023, gotaways numbered an estimated 1.7 million. In October, with the close of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, the estimate of people living in or entering the country illegally was more than 10 million since Biden took office in January 2021.
Four months later, given the December record report, it’s likely soared past 11 million.
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
