EXCLUSIVE: The U.S. Houses Texas GOP Caucus announced Thursday that it is united behind a resolution from Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, arguing that states have constitutional authority to secure their borders against an “invasion” or “imminent danger.”
The caucus is urging Congress to approve the measure, citing what Republicans called the “failed open-border policies” under former President and the millions of illegal immigrants who crossed into the country during his administration.
“It is the job of elected officials to protect the Americans that sent them to office,” Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, said in a statement to Fox News Digital.Â
“Unfortunately, weve seen Democrat leaders willfully facilitate a border invasion time and time again. States ought to be able to step in and secure the border when federal government cannot or will not do so. I am proud to join the Texas GOP Caucus in standing up for the American people.”
The House resolution, first introduced in 2021 in response to the border crisis under the Biden administration, affirms that states have a right under the Constitution to secure their borders if the federal government fails to act. Courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have long treated immigration enforcement as primarily a federal responsibility.
H.Res. 50 says states retain sovereign authority under Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution to defend their territory and citizens from “invasion” or “imminent danger” when the federal government fails to meet what Republicans describe as its Article IV, Section 4 obligation to protect states from invasion.
In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Arrington said the U.S.-Mexico border has largely been secured under the Trump administration but argued his resolution is needed to ensure states can act if a Democrat returns to the White House.
“What we want to avoid is what happened during the four years of the Biden administration, which is, we had a bunch of states being overrun and overwhelmed with illegal immigration and all the various problems that occurred as a result. We didn’t have a federal government that was doing its job and, in fact, we had a federal government that was obstructing states like Texas from actually filling the gap that they left because they abdicated that responsibility,” the congressman said.
Arrington argued that fentanyl and other drugs flowing across the border contributed to more than 100,000 overdose deaths in a single year during the Biden administration, while , cartel activity and drug and human trafficking strained border states.
“The drugs were killing hundreds of thousands, they were killing a plane load of American citizens every week,” Arrington said. “They killed over 100,000 Americans in one year, which is more than we lost in the Vietnam War. When you’re losing more American citizens to what is tantamount to chemical warfare from the Mexican terrorist drug cartels, in close cooperation with the Chinese who were providing the precursor material for synthetic fentanyl, that was the greatest and most imminent threat to our nation during those four years.”
The congressman highlighted that his resolution has received support from the Texas GOP Caucus, conservative organizations, law enforcement officials and legal experts.
“The Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, forbids states from interfering with the federal governments monopoly over our territorial sovereignty,” John Yoo, former deputy assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “But the House of Representatives could make its own findings of fact that failures at the border rose to the level of an imminent danger that would justify a states exercise of self-defense. Such a set of findings might bolster Texass case in the courts as well as its political case to the public. Without such congression
