In its standoff with the federal immigration authorities along the U.S.-Mexico border along the Rio Grande River, Texas argues that it can override the federal governments immigration policy because current migration into the state and criminal acts by drug cartels amount to an invasion.

I have already declared an invasion to invoke Texass constitutional authority to defend and protect itself, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said in a statement on Jan. 24. That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary.

Abbotts declaration of an invasion comes as part of an ongoing standoff between the state of Texas and the federal government over the Texas-Mexico border, which is in turn part of a larger, ideological battle between Republicans and Democrats over immigration rhetoric and policy. In 2023, Abbott ordered the Texas National Guard to erect razor wire fencing and buoys along the Rio Grande to both deter unauthorized migrant crossings, and then, in January, to prevent federal Border Patrol agents from accessing the border to enforce immigration law and save lives, if necessary. Meanwhile, the Biden administration has ordered these measures removed, which Abbott has refused to do. The Supreme Court ruled on Jan. 22 that Texas cannot prevent the Border Patrol from removing razor wire fencing to access the border, but Abbott has remained defiant, raising fears of a constitutional crisis .

Once confined to the nativist far-right, this rhetoric of immigrant invasion has surged into the Republican Party mainstream since former President Donald Trump s rise in 2016. All but one GOP governor has endorsed Abbotts claim of an invasion . This rhetoric has been deployed throughout American history to fuel support for anti-immigration measures and most notably in the Supreme Courts opinion upholding the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

This trope of immigration and invasion was initially developed in the end of the 19th century as a political critique of racially suspect, generally poor, low-skilled laborers, said Matthew Lindsay, a law professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. It portrayed immigrants as faceless masses, who were racially incapable of assimilating into American conceptions of liberty, and would undermine the countrys system of free labor by taking work at exploitative wages.

In 1889, the Supreme Court gave the federal government the power over immigration law that persists today, in a decision upholding the Chinese Exclusion Act that was riddled with racist invasion rhetoric. The court claimed that migrants were not subject to constitutional protections as the federal government needed all tools to repel the Oriental invasion in order to preserve its independence, and give security against foreign aggression and encroachment. Paradoxically, it is that power that Texas now seeks to undermine by deploying the same rhetoric of invasion originally used to justify granting it in the first place.