The Lone Star State is trying to seize the power of the national government in pursuit of its own extreme anti-immigrant measures.

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 government’s 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 Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself,” Gov. Greg Abbott ® said in a statement on Jan. 24. “That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary.”