Cal Thomas

The Department of Justice has announced it is suing Texas Republican Governor Gregg Abbott for using floating barriers in the Rio Grande river to stop migrants who are breaking U.S. law by illegally crossing the Southern border.

For this the word “irony” was created. Defined it means, “the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning.”

Gov. Abbott is doing the job the Biden administration refuses to do, and that is to enforce laws against unlawful border crossings that have been enacted by Republican and Democratic administrations.

Gov. Abbot’s response to the lawsuit was a terse, “I’ll see you in court, Mr. President.”

There are 29 established ports of entry along the Texas border. Any migrant with a credible asylum claim can be legally processed at any one of them. In total, there are 110 Border Patrol checkpoints along the border, a border which the United Nations declared last year is the “deadliest land crossing in the world.”

Laughably, the Department of Justice claims in its lawsuit filing that Gov. Abbott has ordered the “unlawful construction of a floating barrier in the Rio Grande River” and says the barrier might impede the federal government’s “official duties.”

One might reasonably believe that the most important of the government’s “official duties” would be to enforce the law, if only to deter the importation of the deadly drug fentanyl. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, there were “106,699 drug-involved overdose deaths reported in the U.S. in 2021. … Synthetic opioids other than methadone (primarily fentanyl) were the main driver of drug overdose deaths with a nearly 7.5-fold increase from 2015 to 2021.”

The first obligation of any president is to protect the lives of American citizens, whether from threats by a foreign power, or threats from the power that comes from people and drugs pouring across the border. In refusing to do this, the president has violated his oath of office in which he solemnly swore to “faithfully execute” his duties. Doesn’t faithfully execute mean upholding the laws of the land? If he were a Republican and Congress had a Democratic majority in the House, one can reasonably predict articles of impeachment would have already been drawn up.

Donald Trump was impeached for what some consider strictly political reasons. For Democrats and their media enablers and protectors, the rules appear to be different when their policies and beliefs are threatened.

In his 1995 State of the Union address, President Bill Clinton spoke strongly against illegal border crossings and bragged his administration had “deported twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens.” He added, “We are a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of laws.” He pledged to do even more to stem the tide.

In 2005, President Barack Obama said: “We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked, and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently, and lawfully to become immigrants in this country.”

What’s changed? Apparently, only politics. If the courts don’t rule in Gov. Abbott’s favor, then laws don’t mean what they say. It also means presidents can ignore laws without consequences.

In that case we no longer have a constitutional republic, but a dictatorship and tyranny.

Cal Thomas is a syndicated columnist and author. Readers may email him at tcaeditors@tribpub.com.