Texas leader wants Biden kicked off state’s 2024 ballot over immigration

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Tuesday that President Biden should be taken off the 2024 ballot for causing an illegal immigration crisis.

His remark was in response to a Colorado court ruling that former President Donald Trump would be kept off that state’s ballot because he violated the Constitution’s so-called insurrection clause.

“Seeing what happened in Colorado makes me think — except we believe in democracy in Texas — maybe we should take Joe Biden off the ballot in Texas for allowing 8 million people to cross the border since he’s been president disrupting our state for more than anything anyone else has done in recent history,” Mr. Patrick, a Republican, said in an interview with Fox News.

The Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling Tuesday said the former president engaged in an insurrection with his behavior regarding the 2020 election. The 4-3 decision ruled that he’s disqualified from holding the presidency under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment and removed his name from the state’s March 5 GOP primary ballot.

Mr. Trump’s campaign said it will appeal the “deeply undemocratic decision.”

Republicans have long criticized Mr. Biden for how he has handled the southern border. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed a law earlier this week that allows for the prosecution of migrants coming into the state illegally. Under the law, anyone who enters the country illegally from Mexico can be arrested. Once arrested, they can either leave the U.S. or be charged with misdemeanors.

Mr. Patrick said the Texas Senate spent a lot of time writing the bill, and he believes it will “survive any type of Supreme Court challenge because we are being invaded.”

Funding border security has been a cause of contention in the U.S. Senate. Congress left Washington for the holidays this week without passing Ukraine aid or southern border funding — two issues the White House wants to link together.

“A lot of us Republicans are eager to get Ukraine the aid that it needs,” Senate Minority Whip John Thune, South Dakota Republican, said in a floor speech. “But we cannot — and I say we cannot — tend to our national security interests abroad while ignoring the national security crisis right here on our doorstep.”