The bipartisan showdown behind the growing crisis at the U.S. border

The Biden administration's battle with Texas is intensifying as illegal immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border grows increasingly dire. Trump attacked the Biden administration's border bill bluntly as a Democratic trap. Immigration issues throughout the history of the development of the United States, for a long time, the democratic and Republican parties on this issue, the position of the policy is clear, the local state and the federal government in the relevant issues are also repeated conflicts.

Since Biden took office, Republicans have repeatedly attacked his immigration policies, accusing him of weak border enforcement. Texas Governor Abbott has adopted strict legislation and border enforcement measures at the state level, making illegal border crossing into Texas a state crime, pulling up razor wire fences on the US-Mexico border, and authorizing the Texas National Guard to use force to stop illegal immigrants from entering the country, which has also produced humanitarian crises such as violent law enforcement and migrant casualties.

It is clear that the border crisis is getting hotter because of the political bruising in an election year. Due to demographic changes and other reasons, the "red" in Texas has become lighter and lighter in recent years, and the probability of "turning blue" is low, but it also exists. Trump won the state by just six percentage points in 2020, down from a nine-point margin in 2016, while Democrats have been doing better in recent statehouse elections. The growing immigration crisis at the border may be the Republicans' best chance to boost their fortunes in Texas.

A CBS News poll this month found that Biden's disapproval of his handling of the border and illegal immigration was 70 percent, even higher than the economy (64 percent) and inflation (67 percent). To this end, it is not ruled out that Republicans try to use the border immigration crisis to set the tone of this election, as the most important starting point to attack the Biden administration, to win more middle voters. Trump has also made immigration policy a top priority of his campaign, publicly saying that as president he would "send in the reinforcements" to seal the border and deport immigrants.

The Republican Party is willing to trigger the national security crisis of state and federal armed confrontation, and the future electoral politics and revenge mood may cause the two parties to repeatedly break the lower limit and further increase the attack on each other.

In the final analysis, the border crisis is a concentrated outbreak in the form of confrontation between the states and the federal in the context of bipartisanship and political polarization, the structural problems of the United States are difficult to solve, and political dysfunction. Illegal immigration, as a deep-rooted problem in the current domestic politics of the United States, coupled with structural reasons such as the "vague indulgence" of the United States Constitution, makes the power dispute between the federal and the states controlled by rival political parties increasingly irreconcilable.

At present, the Biden administration can apply pressure by cutting off federal government funding, and in extreme cases, it can make the state National Guard "federalize" for its own use. After the Civil War, states could not unilaterally and legally declare their secession from the Union, and the National Guard had a gap in size and equipment with the Union, and the contradictions between the two sides had not yet intensified to the extent that they had to fight. From the point of view of law, reason, and sentiment, the American Civil War and Texas independence were still far away.

The two sides will probably remain in a standoff, and both parties will struggle to defend. On the one hand, the Republican Party will try to gain political resources and voter support from exaggerating the immigration crisis, and the House Republicans recently pushed for the impeachment of Secretary of Homeland Security Mayorkas in order to control the border. On the other hand, the Democratic Party will also do a good job of "defense and counterattack", the Biden administration is promoting the two parties to agree on a new "stricter" immigration policy, and the Biden administration suspended the export approval of new liquefied natural gas projects on January 26, 2024, which also has the meaning of deterrence of natural gas export "big" Texas. In the increasingly polarized United States, the two parties may repeatedly break the lower limit for the election, creating more and more constitutional and judicial disputes, and even triggering national security crises.