Arizona Gubernatorial Candidate Kari Lake Offers Groundbreaking Solution to Fix Border: Go Around Feds with an Interstate Compact

Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake unveiled a border security plan aimed at circumventing the federal government through the creation of an interstate compact.

Titled “Defend Arizona: We will do what Washington will not,” her plan will bring states together to use Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution to “declare their territories as under invasion and declare it their sovereign right to secure the borders of the United States.” Lake told The Arizona Sun Times, “The people of Arizona and the people of this country are dying to have real solutions to bring sanity and the security back to the border.”

A record number of migrants – up 2,405% – are currently crossing Arizona’s border with Mexico in the Yuma sector, and a higher than normal percentage of them have criminal backgrounds. Gov. Doug Ducey sent troops and officers to the border in 2021, and earlier this month, Yuma Mayor Douglass Nichols declared an emergency there.

Lake’s plan, which she would like to see implemented as soon as possible, even during Ducey’s remaining year, would have Arizona lead a coalition of like-minded states in drafting the compact. Because the federal government is not guaranteeing protection to the states as required by Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, the states may invoke “our inherent power to fend off the invasion at our southern border in the absence of federal protection.”

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