USA: Texas Rep. Chip Roy (R) said that Texans are beginning to question whether being a part of the United States is worth the illegal immigration crisis currently playing out on the U.S. southern border.
Roy relayed the feelings of his constituents during an interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation on Friday. Roy also said that every state should be answering Texas’ call to aid it and secure the southern border.
“Every state in the union should send resources to the state of Texas to help us secure the border because, dadgummit, Texas is going to secure this border if the United States of America is failing to uphold its end of the bargain of our having a union,” Roy said.
“I’ve got people in Texas that are starting to rattle about ‘what are we getting out of this equation? What are we getting out of being a part of a union that won’t secure its own border?’” he continued. “You know what — it’s our border, too.”
Texas has “a duty as a state, as a sovereign people, to defend ourselves,” Roy said. “The first duty of government — to secure the people” and to “take care of our communities.”
Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) and Arizona Governor Doug Ducey sent out a joint letter on June 10 requesting aid from governors of the other 48 states in securing the border as the U.S. struggles to contain a flood of illegal immigrants.
Abbott had already declared Texas’ plan to complete the southern border wall, at least along its own southern border. As The Daily Wire reported:
“Securing our border with Mexico is the federal government’s responsibility. But the Biden administration has proven unwilling or unable to do the job,” the governors wrote in a letter dated June 10. “This failure to enforce federal immigration laws causes banns that spill over into every State.”
“The cartels will see to it that their deadly fentanyl and human-trafficking victims reach far and wide. The convicted criminals they smuggle into the homeland will bring recidivism with them to far too many of your communities. And although now people are coming to our border from as far away as Senegal, Bangladesh, and Uzbekistan, the cartels are not exactly screening for threats to public health or national security,” the governors wrote.
The governors highlighted that they have each already deployed hundreds of officers and national guardsmen to the border to assist Border Patrol in securing the border.
“In response to the ongoing surge of illegal border crossings, with the accompanying threats to private property and to the safety of our citizens, Governor Abbott has declared a disaster and Governor Ducey has declared an emergency,” the letter says. “Given the staggering number of violations now occurring in Texas and Arizona, additional manpower is needed from any state that can spare it. With your help, we can apprehend more of these perpetrators of state and federal crimes, before they can cause problems in your State.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) and Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts (R) have both pledged to send law enforcement officers to the two border states to help bolster the U.S. southern border.
