Texas just scored a significant legal victory in its ongoing fight to protect its citizens from the consequences of federal immigration negligence.
And before the constitutional scholars start firing off angry emails, let me say something up front:
Yes, immigration enforcement is primarily a federal responsibility. It should be. The Constitution largely says so.
The federal government should lead. The federal government should enforce. The federal government should secure the border. The federal government should do the job taxpayers are paying it to do. Which, as it turns out, was exactly the problem.
For four years under Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas, Americans were told two things simultaneously.
First, that only the federal government could enforce immigration law.
Second, that the federal government wasn’t particularly interested in enforcing much of it.
And then came the third part—the really magical part. States weren’t allowed to do much about it either.
Now maybe it’s because I started working in radio when I was 14 years old, but I’ve spent most of my life listening to people explain things. And whenever someone has to explain something that hard, that often, and with that many lawyers involved, there’s usually a pretty good chance the explanation isn’t nearly as convincing as they think it is.
The Biden Administration’s position essentially boiled down to this:
“Only we can enforce immigration law.”
“Okay,” said Texas. “Then enforce it.”
“No.”
“Then we’ll help.”
“Also no.”
Apparently, that was supposed to sound persuasive. It didn’t.
It sounded like the kind of argument your children make when they don’t want to do a chore but also don’t want anyone else doing it either.
The Constitution grants authority over immigration to the federal government because America is one nation. We don’t need 50 different immigration systems. That’s common sense.
But here’s another piece of common sense that Washington somehow misplaced for several years:
Authority and responsibility travel together. You don’t get one without the other.
If you insist that nobody else can do the job, then you had better be doing the job. And that’s where everything began to fall apart.
What always amazed me was how often the people lecturing Texans about border policy seemed to live comfortably insulated from the consequences of their own decisions.
Funny how that works.
The people appearing on Sunday talk shows weren’t repairing cut fences. They weren’t finding discarded backpacks on private property. They weren’t dealing with cartel activity. They weren’t explaining to their children why strangers were crossing the back portion of the family ranch after dark. Those burdens belonged to ordinary Americans.
And yes, before someone sends me the predictable email, I understand that not every person crossing illegally is a prior criminal.
Of course not.
That’s not the point.
The point is that a government has a responsibility to know who is entering the country before releasing them into communities throughout the nation.
That isn’t radical. It’s not extremist. It’s not xenophobic. It’s the same standard every parent applies to his own home.
Actually, let me pause there for a second. Because, as a father, this is where the conversation stops being theoretical.
I have one daughter. She’s still at home. And like every father worth his salt, there are moments when I still find myself checking the locks before bed, looking out the window when a car sits too long on the street, or making sure she got where she was going safely.
That’s not paranoia. That’s fatherhood.
And yes, like many fathers of daughters, I’ve had those nightmares. The ones where you’re trying to get to her but can’t get there fast enough. The ones where you’re yelling but no sound comes out. The ones that wake you up in the middle of the night and send you down the hallway just to make sure everything is okay.
Every father knows exactly what I’m talking about. Which is why some of us get frustrated when politicians discuss public safety as though it’s merely an academic exercise or a talking point for cable news.
For parents, it isn’t theoretical. It’s personal.
The people who pay the price for failed policies are rarely the politicians who created them. They’re the families left behind afterward. That’s why this debate matters. And that’s why the legal argument against Texas never passed the smell test.
Texas wasn’t trying to become its own country. Texas wasn’t issuing visas. Texas wasn’t establishing foreign policy. Texas wasn’t opening an embassy in Cancun. Although given the last administration’s priorities, somebody probably could have proposed that with a straight face. Texas was responding to a crisis that Washington spent years insisting wasn’t really a crisis.
Remember that?
Millions of illegal crossings. Record encounters. Communities overwhelmed. Local resources stretched thin. And Americans were repeatedly informed that what they were seeing wasn’t actually what they were seeing.
That sales pitch worked about as well as you’d expect.
What gets lost in these conversations is the group that should probably be the most offended by all of this: legal immigrants.
I’ve met too many legal immigrants over the years not to think about them whenever this issue comes up.
These are people who followed the rules. They filled out the paperwork. Paid the fees. Waited their turn. Learned the language. Studied for citizenship. Worked hard. Built businesses. Raised families. And contributed enormously to this country.
What exactly are we supposed to tell them? That the law mattered when it applied to them but became optional when politicians found enforcement inconvenient? That’s not compassion. That’s disrespect.
One of the biggest lies in modern politics is that enforcing immigration law is somehow anti-immigrant.
In reality, immigration law is what makes immigration possible.
Without rules, there is no system. Without a system, there is no fairness. Without fairness, public confidence eventually disappears.
Most Americans understand this instinctively.
Not because they’re angry. Not because they’re hateful. Not because they’re anti-immigrant. But because they recognize something that every sovereign nation in history has recognized: A country has both the right and the obligation to know who is entering its borders and under what conditions.
That’s not controversial. At least it wasn’t until recently.
The mother in a border town deserves to know that her government takes her family’s safety seriously. The Border Patrol agent pulling another exhausting shift deserves to know his work matters. The rancher repairing damage for the fifth time deserves to know someone in Washington is paying attention. The legal immigrant who played by the rules deserves to know that those rules still mean something. And every father who lies awake at night worrying about his family deserves to know that government is doing the most basic thing government exists to do. Protect its citizens.
The federal government should lead on immigration enforcement. It should secure the border. It should enforce the laws Congress has already passed. It should fulfill the responsibility that comes with the authority it claims.
But when Washington refuses to do those things, states should not be required to stand around helplessly pretending everything is fine.
Because everything wasn’t fine.
Texas knew it. Its citizens knew it. The American people knew it. And judging by this latest legal victory, the courts are beginning to figure it out, too.
Common sense got there years ago.