Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake says Arizona 'will show Texas how' to declare an invasion

Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake reiterated her commitment to declare an invasion at the Arizona-Mexico border at a news conference on Friday. She said once she’s governor, “Arizona would show Texas how to do it.”

If elected, and after being sworn in, she said, “on day one, hour one,” she will declare an invasion. “We are going to declare an invasion initially and put everybody on notice that Arizona is taking control of their own border and ask the federal government to help and see if they’ll do it. Kind of don’t think they will.

“And then we’re going to work to stop people from coming over,” she added, “using our National Guard. We’re going to make sure that we don’t have trucks rolling in with drugs. We’re going to pressure the Mexican side of the border to help us out much like they did with President [Donald] Trump."

Lake said President Joe Biden "rolled out the welcome mat and told the whole world to come in,” she said, “and now he wants to just continue. Millions of people are pouring across the border … We don’t know who they are, what their backgrounds are. We are just not going to accept this kind of lawlessness in Arizona any longer.”

Closing the Arizona border would “send a very loud message to the cartels,” she said, telling them directly: “Your days of running drugs and trafficking children and trafficking people through Arizona are over. You’ll have to find another route because Arizona is not going to be that route anymore.”

Lake's remarks came after Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich in February issued an opinion affirming Arizona’s constitutional authority to defend its sovereignty. It also came nearly 18 months after Kinney County Attorney Brent Smith was the first in Texas to advocate that Texas declare an invasion.

Lake’s determination has highlighted a sore point among conservatives in Arizona and Texas who’ve called on their governors to declare an invasion. Arizona’s outgoing governor, Doug Ducey, has not done so. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who’s expected to win reelection to his third term after Tuesday's midterms, issued an executive order citing Texas’ constitutional authority to defend itself. However, he hasn’t used his full constitutional authority to repel the invasion, conservatives argue.

No Arizona counties have declared an invasion; 33 in Texas and the Republican Party of Texas have and the Texas Public Policy Foundation has expressed support for doing so.

The governors have maintained they’ve responded to chaos created by Biden’s “open border policies.” Last June, they formed an interstate compact to enhance border security and called on other governors for help. They authorized a record amount of taxpayer dollars to fund border security operations, including calling up their National Guard, actions they said they shouldn’t have had to take but did.

Abbott was the first governor to build a wall on Texas soil, to authorize state law enforcement to apprehend illegal foreign nationals and return them to ports of entry, and to designate Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. He’s also the only governor to sign memorandums of understanding with Mexican governors, four of them to date.

Since last March, Texas border security efforts have led to more than 321,000 illegal foreign nationals apprehensions, more than 21,400 arrests with 18,900 felony charges reported, and more than 350 million lethal doses of fentanyl confiscated, enough to kill everyone in the United States.

Texas has also bused nearly 8,300 people to Washington, D.C., since April, over 3,500 to New York City since Aug. 5, and more than 1,100 to Chicago since Aug. 31.

Arizona has also bused several thousand to Washington, D.C.

Florida, Louisiana and other states have joined Arizona and Texas in suing the Biden administration, so far winning many legal challenges as they progress in courts. But their efforts haven’t been enough to stop millions of people coming from over 150 countries, including 98 known terrorists.

In fiscal 2022, more than 2.7 million people were apprehended, a U.S. record, excluding at least one million who evaded capture, according to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol data. An estimated more than 5 million have been apprehended or evaded capture since Biden’s been in office, greater than the population of 26 individual U.S. states, according to the federal data.

Unlike Lake and Brnovich, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his staff don’t have the same constitutional understanding, national security law expert and Navy JAG attorney Jonathan Hullihan says.

He told The Center Square that Lake “correctly asserts Arizona has the constitutional authority under the Arizona and U.S. constitutions to protect its citizens from an invasion.

“She also understands that declaring an invasion isn’t about Arizona enforcing federal immigration law, but rather repelling the invasion of cartel activity that uses migrant-warfare, drug-warfare, and other unconventional warfare methods to spread terror on both sides of the border and maximize profits.”

He also warns that if other border states don’t declare an invasion and Lake does, the cartels will simply accelerate and shift their operations to them.

“This will obviously cause more fentanyl, violence, and human trafficking to come through Texas, New Mexico and California,” Hullihan said. He also hopes that “in the absence of federal border security, Texas, Arizona, and other states will form a compact under their U.S. constitutional authority to repel an invasion and protect their states.”