By Attorney General Raúl Labrador
Dear Friends,
On Monday, a group of 26 Attorneys General from around the country issued a letter, admonishing the Administration to enforce immigration laws. We, the signers, noted that more than six million people have illegally crossed into the United States in just under three years – a combined population of both Utah and Iowa. Our letter concluded, “If you cannot bring yourselves to enforce the law, get out of the way so Texas can.”
The last three years of the Biden Administration have been an absolute windfall to human traffickers, modern-day sex slavery, drug cartels, and foreign terrorist groups exploiting the lack of enforcement and flooding across our Southern border. Every state, including Idaho, feels the impact from this lack of border enforcement. Our fentanyl deaths in Idaho tripled in 2021, and then doubled the year after that. We are being held hostage to the Administration’s inaction.
Last week, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a decision stating the federal government could remove razor wire that Texas placed to stanch the flow of illegal immigrants into their state, given the Administration’s complete lack of action on this invasion. However, the SCOTUS ruling didn’t say Texas couldn’t continue to install razor wire in new locations, or replace or repair those same removed barriers, or that Texas was wrong to place them in defense of their state sovereignty.
The lawsuit from Texas against the federal government was triggered after the Administration’s Border Patrol cut holes in the razor wire more than 20 times in a single month, and in one case, used a forklift to raise the wire to let in more than 300 illegal immigrants. Many of these barriers are placed, with permission, on private property that adjoins the border. The abject lack of federal enforcement (if not outright enabling) has encouraged illegal immigration in unprecedented numbers.
In typical fashion, the Biden Administration has attempted to pass the blame – in this instance, to Congress. But the Executive Branch of the federal government is responsible for the enforcement of laws, not Congress. If Biden truly wanted to enforce the law by securing the border, why would his Administration blatantly undermine the efforts of Texas, which shoulders the greatest burden from the endless flow of illegal immigrants, drugs, and human traffickers into the country? One may reasonably ask whose best interests is the Biden Administration protecting?
This has been an invasion by every rational definition of the term, and the Biden Administration has gone from incompetently turning a blind eye to actively encouraging it. As sovereign states and as a nation of laws, we stand with Texas.
We should all stand with Texas.
Best regards,
Raúl Labrador was elected Attorney General of Idaho after serving three terms in the Legislature and four terms in the US Congress. The Attorney General’s Office provides legal representation to the State of Idaho. The Attorney General and his deputies represent state agencies and offices, to better the lives of Idahoans.
