Fort Worth-area county declares ‘disaster’ and ‘invasion’ over illegal immigration. Really?

You’d think Republicans would do their best right now to help Gov. Greg Abbott.

But not in Parker County, where County Judge Pat Deen and commissioners are undermining Abbott.

Ten weeks before voting begins in an ever-narrowing Texas election, county leaders sided with a local secessionist faction and declared a countywide disaster, urging Abbott to claim fantasy military powers and use troops to violently expel those “invading the sovereignty of Texas.”

Parker County is under foreign “invasion,” commissioners agreed unanimously July 25.

They warned of a “security threat and humanitarian disaster.”

Look, I know it’s been a few weeks since I made a run to the H-E-B.

Sure, it was crowded. But I had no idea Hudson Oaks was facing international peril.

Maybe they were talking about all the cars from Illinois and California. If there’s an invasion in Parker County, it is not coming from a border 350 miles south.

In a phone interview, Deen said commissioners’ disaster declaration “supports the governor’s efforts” against cartels and traffickers, and isn’t political.

But one of the speakers the very day commissioners issued the declaration was a Peaster resident who said Abbott calls the border secure and “it is not. .... Shut it all down! He’s not going to do it during an election year. We have to put pressure!”

Instead of claiming some imaginary powers, Abbott is spending public money to send illegal border crossers voluntarily by bus to New York, D.C. and maybe other states.

I’m not sure that helps either. But it shares the burden and better makes Abbott’s political point.

In a close election, the rule for Republicans right now is: Don’t do anything stupid.

Abbott can’t legally send military troops to hunt border crossers down like enemies. He can keep peace along the Rio Grande. But he can’t constitutionally declare international war.

“This is entirely unhelpful to Abbott and Republicans,” political science professor Matthew Wilson, an expert on Christian conservative politics, wrote by email from Southern Methodist University.

Republicans want to focus on President Joe Biden’s failures, Wilson wrote.

The “best way to screw that up,” he wrote, is by “taking unprecedented steps of dubious constitutionality.”

Asking Abbott to violently capture border crossers “plays right into the Democrats’ narrative that Republicans are extreme, unpredictable, and unsuitable,” he wrote.

Dallas-based Republican consultant Vinny Minchillo wrote by email there is a “false belief” that declaring an invasion would force stronger action.

“The governor is not going to declare an ‘invasion’ because it does him no good,” Minchillo said.

In the interview, Deen tried to justify an “invasion” declaration based on the cost to county taxpayers when illegal border crossers are jailed for some other reason, or when they give birth.

But we help pay for births. Babies are fellow Americans.

Deen, a Hudson Oaks Republican and that city’s former mayor, also said commissioners don’t want “jobs taken away.” But that isn’t a problem in Parker County, where the unemployment is 3%.

Sheriff Russ Authier told Deen and commissioners George Conley, Steve Dugan, Craig Peacock and Larry Walden how Parker County has seen a “huge influx” of fentanyl. But almost all the fentanyl seized at the border is at ports of entry, not from border crossers.

According to county records, the invasion declaration was proposed by state Republican Party committeewoman Rachel Horton of Lake Weatherford using similar declarations from border county judges. She did not return a call.

The declaration, originally from Kinney County, cites a Fox News Channel entertainer as a primary source. A footnote says border crossers are not visible because they have “disappeared into the fabric of America.”

In other words, Parker County has declared it is in imminent danger from foreigners who have disappeared.

This resolution is definitely a disaster.