Well, this is a new one. There have plenty of attacks on DeSantis and Abbott, even accusing them of trafficking, as you well know. Now we have attacking the Constitution
Republican Governors Shipping Migrants Around the Country Is a Disturbing Attack on the Constitution
(Multiple paragraphs about the shipping of the illegals/migrants, all of which you know)
President Biden and others have derided these trips, as well as the ones arranged by DeSantis, as “political stunts.” They are more disturbing than that. They are lawless acts, deliberate attempts by some states, acting through their governors, to contravene the basic premise and purpose of the union established by the U.S. Constitution.
States have always had to find ways to coexist even when they have divergent interests or policy preferences. The Constitution itself was adopted to resolve coordination difficulties the states had in matters such as national defense, the conduct of foreign affairs, the creation of a common currency, and financing a national government. The federal courts, also established by the Constitution and further developed by Congress, provide another avenue where states can peacefully and lawfully resolve their differences, adjudicating particular disputes that arise between them. Even before such fights ripen into lawsuits, states, like individuals, sometimes need to negotiate terms of cooperation with one another. There is an established legal mechanism for doing this, called an interstate compact. It, too, is rooted in the United States Constitution, which has been interpreted by federal courts to set ground rules for ensuring such state-to-state agreements have the assent of the federal government.
Texas, Arizona, and Florida are all already party to numerous interstate compacts, spanning everything from multistate lotteries to water apportionment to child custody and adoption to professional licensing. Had Abbott, Ducey and DeSantis been trying to develop multistate mechanisms for accommodating asylum seekers and other lawful migrants, they could have approached their counterparts in other states to hash out an agreed upon plan.
That’s the argument from Heidi Li Feldman, a Professor of Law and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University Law Center. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. Abbott, DeSantis, and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey didn’t establish a compact to ship illegals/migrants to Democratic Party run areas which call themselves sanctuary cities. That’s some serious weak sauce from a professor of law. There is a compact, in which people can cross borders of states as much as they want if they’re here.
And, not one word from Feldman regarding Biden flying the same people around the country in the dead of night and dropping them off in small town America with zero warning.
Instead, Abbott, Ducey, and now DeSantis have chosen to ambush the governments of sister states by surprising them with the arrival of busloads and planeloads of migrants at unannounced times and places. They have refused requests from mayors in other states to work together. The buses and planes sent by Abbott, Ducey, and DeSantis discharge their passengers wherever will get the most press coverage or will cause inconvenience and difficulties for residents and government responders.
Ambush? Now, that’s funny. Still no mention of Biden doing this. Or, border states being ambushed by massive inflows of migrants/illegals.
The U.S. Constitution does not explicitly forbid one state from purposely creating disorder in another. But attempts to do this subvert one basic premise for joining together in legal union: peaceful, cooperative co-existence among states, as well as between them and the federal government. As state governors, Ducey, Abbott, and DeSantis have acted extra-constitutionally, even anti-constitutionally. While they have not launched armed attacks on other states or the federal government, they have shown a refusal to participate in the basic design and ambition of the American constitutional union. That is a step toward secession.
So, sending these migrants creates disorder to non-border states, ones who advocate for open borders and now get to share in it? It’s silly, very silly, but, the point here is not to create a strong argument, it’s to create a talking point that the three governors and their states are violating the Constitution (the same one Democrats hate because it stop their authoritarianism).
Read: Time: Shipping Migrants To Sanctuary Cities Is An Attack On The Constitution Or Something »