Governor Greg Abbott and his fellow Texans are under siege. So much so that he’s written an urgent letter to his 49 fellow governors to ask for their help. The letter begins:

President Joe Biden’s negligent disregard for America’s national security hit another devastating milestone last week when his Administration ended Title 42 expulsions. Since taking office, President Biden has willfully refused to enforce our nation’s immigration laws while systematically dismantling every effective border security policy that previously led to the lowest number of illegal border crossings in decades. The resultant surge in illegal immigration and transnational criminal activity is a direct consequence of these misguided actions, and yet President Biden further jeopardized our nation’s security by ending Title 42 expulsions on May 11, 2023.

Abbott then notes that while the flood of illegals hits Texas first, it doesn’t stay in Texas. “Emboldened Mexican drug cartels and other transnational criminal enterprises,” he writes, “profit off this chaos, smuggling people and dangerous drugs like fentanyl into communities nationwide.” Synthetic opioids including fentanyl, as the CDC reported Wednesday, killed 75,000 Americans in 2022.

Abbott’s message has apparently taken hold, as 24 Republican governors have responded. Florida’s Ron DeSantis has led the way, announcing Tuesday that he’s sending the following assets to Texas:

101 Florida Highway Patrol troopers, 200 Florida Department of Law Enforcement officers, 800 Florida National Guard soldiers, 20 Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officers, 20 emergency management personnel, five available fixed-wing aircraft with monitoring equipment and downlink capabilities with two aviation crew teams, two Mobile Command Vehicles with command teams, 17 available unmanned aerial vehicles and support teams, and 10 assorted water vessels.

As Just the News reports, the governors pledging support in addition to Florida “include those of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.”

Perhaps they realize that, thanks to Joe Biden and his treacherous midnight flights, and thanks to the ultimate phoniness of the “sanctuary city” status of so many Democrat-run communities large and small, every state is now a border state.

As Abbott’s message concluded: “President Biden unleashed a nationwide crisis and subsequently denied the federal government’s responsibility to address it. However, as Texas has demonstrated, when united we can overcome any challenge together.”

And so, as Biden’s southern border disaster continues to unfold, it’s worth reminding ourselves how we got here.

No, it’s not because Republicans have refused to pass — wait for it! — comprehensive immigration reform legislation. Ronald Reagan did that once — once — and he got burned. The Simpson-Mazzoli Act, also deceptively known as The Immigration Reform and Control Act, was signed by The Gipper in 1986. In exchange for better border security and tougher sanctions against businesses that hired illegals, the bill granted amnesty to three million illegals who were already in the U.S.

The illegals, of course, got their amnesty, but the American people didn’t get their border security, as the bill’s sponsors softened the penalties against businesses that hired illegals, and Congress refused to fund the hiring of additional Border Patrol agents. In fact, we got just the opposite: Illegal immigration soared after Simpson-Mazzoli’s passage, and our nation’s prevailing border-security attitude has remained unserious ever since.

So the obvious takeaway is the Democrats can’t be trusted on border security. Why? Because they don’t want it.

This wasn’t always the case, though. There was a time when border security enjoyed bipartisan support. Unfortunately, Democrats who were once plentiful in calling for a secure border are now nowhere to be found.

No, they haven’t gone missing, or lost their reelection bids, or retired. Instead, they’ve changed their minds. As columnist Deroy Murdock pointed out in a 2019 column, none other than Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Chuck Schumer used to be for border security before they were against it. Indeed, these party leaders were among 26 Senate Democrats who voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which authorized 700 miles of double-fencing. Seven years later, all 54 Senate Democrats voted for $46 billion in border security and 350 miles of new steel fence.

So what happened? Politics happened — or, more specifically, political power happened. Democrats, you see, have for years been losing the white vote to the Republican Party, so they’re desperately and cynically trying to grow the brown vote as a replacement.

It would be a welcome turn if brown and black Americans grew to realize that illegal immigration hurts them worst of all — not only by siphoning off social services from those who need them most, but also by cheapening the cost of labor and thereby depressing the wages of lower-income workers. Perhaps that’s a message worth delivering repeatedly on the campaign trail between now and November 2024.

Among presidents since Reagan, only Donald Trump has understood the fiscal and cultural ruin caused by unchecked illegal immigration — which is why only he made border security a priority.

Elections, of course, have consequences. And where border security is concerned, Joe Biden is one disastrous consequence.