Goin' South

Goin’ South - etymology. (become worse): The origin is unclear. Common belief attributes it to the standard orientation of maps, where south is the downwards direction. Alternatively, it could stem from a euphemism used by some Native Americans for dying.

Instead of working to solve problems at the border, there is cascading stupidity to make the situation unimaginably worse. There are supposedly 750,000 tractor trailers bound for the Eagle Pass area, where the Texas National Guard is blocking federal agents from Shelby Park. The giant truck convoy, if it manifests, is said to be heading to Quemado, Texas, about twenty miles north of where the Border Patrol is stuck in a standoff with Governor Greg Abbott and the Texas Military Department. As doubtful as it might be that three-quarters of a million trucks will roll into the brush country, the idea that such an event will serve to solve the immigration crisis is patently absurd. If they lined up nose to trailer all along the line from Brownsville to Tijuana, they might actually create an obstruction. Presently, though, they are just another distraction. And we’ve already got a few of those.

Hypocrisy is the Republican political fuel driving the crisis. Abbott of Texas and twenty-five other GOP governors are defying an order from the U.S. Supreme Court to allow Border Patrol agents to cut and remove the concertina wire lining the border. These Trump tools holding public office are people who sang the glories of the new conservative court and the rule of law when the justices overturned Roe v. Wade and ended a woman’s right to choose. The court, though, is not relevant when it rules against what the far right conservatives desire in their effort to turn this country into an authoritarian wasteland. Opponents to the decision are trying to artfully parse what they think it does not mean with Abbott deploying his doublethink to interpret the court’s intent.

“There were no sentences,” he said on a network news channel that has never questioned his actions, “Or paragraphs or pages of an opinion written by the Supreme Court, so no one knows at all what they were thinking.”

Greg thinks he knows what the justices wanted, though, and that’s for Texas to defy a law it finds offensive. He keeps citing the state’s constitutional right to protect itself from an invasion, but his misinterpretation of the language in the U.S. founding document is as dangerous as his rhetoric. Conservatives believe that Article I, § 10, Clause 3, give states the authority to muster up forces to stop foreign attacks, which is not what is occurring on the Rio Grande. Here is the exact text: "No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact 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."

A few analysts have pointed out that the language was composed at a time when travel was slow and distances were too great for military forces to move quickly so the founders gave states power of self-protection until federal resources arrived. “Admit of delay” is the key phrase. In fact, Texas appears to also violate the clause simply by keeping troops in a time of peace. The Texas Military Department includes the Texas Army National Guard and the Texas State Guard and those organizations have provided the soldiers erecting razor wire and anti-climb barriers along the border, following orders of their adjutant general and the governor while defying the U.S. Constitution, which gives border protection authority only to the federal government.

Odds are increasing of a Constitutional crisis down here. Defying federal law and ignoring orders of the country’s highest court is no minor thing. What happens when secessionists convince our radical governor that Washington has no authority to collect taxes? Or protect the environment or guarantee product safety? Federal regulations guide American business and lives and if those can be capriciously cast aside by an attention-seeking politico, what is their actual value? Don’t they become meaningless words on parchment or in pixels? President Biden has complete authority to call up the Texas National Guard and issue new orders to the troops as their Commander-in-Chief. What happens then? The political blowback will be loud with conservatives claiming such actions prove he wants an open border and Whites to be replaced by brown hordes from the south. Such a move by the President has great potential for danger that could turn into a flash point of a greater crisis.

It’s easy to see this, too, as a Gov. George Wallace of Alabama moment. Wallace, who ran his administrations with the slogan of “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” did not want Blacks enrolled at the University of Alabama. When the first two African American students arrived to register for classes in 1963, the state’s governor was standing in the schoolhouse door to stop their passage. President John F. Kennedy, when informed of the governor’s plans, federalized the Alabama National Guard, which then arrived to give Wallace the message he needed to get out of the way and let the two students enroll and begin the racial integration of the university. Abbott’s defiance is hardly different, and the same powers are at the disposal of President Biden, should he choose to use them. It is impossible to guess, though, if the outcome would be peaceful.

There is not an open border, though; there is an overwhelmed border, however. Biden does not want an open border and he has had a supplemental budget proposal to help fight the crisis. The President has been asking Congress to fund 1300 more border patrol agents, 375 administrative law judges to process claims of asylum and arguments for cause of entry, and more technology to detect fentanyl, which enters the U.S. mostly hidden in trucks crossing at legal ports of entry, not in the backpacks of desperate immigrants. The Senate has devised a bi-partisan plan that Biden describes as the “toughest and fairest set of reforms on the border we’ve ever had in our country.” They give the President the power to shut down the border when certain numbers of apprehensions are reached on a daily basis. There are guidelines also that will trigger mandatory expulsions back to Mexico and process asylum claims within six months.

The president has vowed to shut down the border the day the new law hits his desk for signature, but Trump’s party has no interest in solving a problem that can be used to effectuate political harm on the incumbent president. The House Speaker, who has not even read the measure, has called it “dead on arrival” in the house and that he would not put the law to a floor vote. Trump told his minions he does not want the bill passed, and, consequently, the votes are not likely to materialize in the lower chamber. If you fix the border, you sure as hell can’t run a campaign bitching about problems on the border, so, as I’ve insisted previously, there will be no agreement passed and we will live with this crisis until Biden is reelected and gets a Democratic House and Senate.

Meanwhile, down on the Rio Grande, tensions increase. Greg Abbott sees himself as America’s savior, violating federal law and endangering lives. Border Patrol agents will probably not begin removing razor wire but they are certainly authorized by the court to cut it and rescue immigrants entrapped or stressed by conditions on this side of the river. The frightening moment arrives when a BP agent exercises his or her authority to cut the wire and a Texas soldier steps in front of them with a gun to prevent the action. What defuses that situation? It seems a confrontation wanted by Texas leaders as they invoke images and language from the Texas Revolution and the “Come and Take It” cannon from the first land battle. They are spoiling for a fight. Not a solution.