14 GOP governors at Texas border pressure Biden over crossings

President Biden and his Mexican counterpart, Andres Manuel López Obrador, discussed joint efforts on migration in a phone call Saturday.

Sunday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott continued his defiance against the White House at the U.S.-Mexico border in Eagle Pass, speaking in the public park he has seized state control over, preventing federal agents from doing foot patrols in, intending to send a political message about immigration and border security in a presidential election year.  

He was joined by 14 of the 24 other Republican governors in Shelby Park who co-signed a letter claiming that the Biden administration has violated the federal government’s “compact” with the states — an abdication that justifies state usurpation of federal authority at the border. 

It is a remarkable rhetorical escalation in the disagreement that Abbott began advancing as soon as Democrat Joe Biden was elected in 2020 and later was sworn in as president in 2021.  

That kind of language harkens back to the theory of secession the southern states used to leave the union when the Civil War started. 

Scripps News