Calls for Texit: Why some in Texas want the state to leave the US

America’s Texas state is witnessing calls for secession from some quarters. Loosely inspired by Britain’s Brexit from the European Union (EU), the proponents of the move are demanding a separate country for Texas, a secession that they call Texit.

Texas was once a sovereign country albeit briefly. Now, some Texans want to take back the state to that 200-year-old status. They say this would tackle the immigration border crisis and the fight with the Joe Biden administration over who controls the border with Mexico.

Tensions recently arose between the US president and Texas’ Republican governor Greg Abbott over immigration at the southern border.

“We know here in Texas, the only way that Texas will ever be able to secure the border and have a sensible immigration system is to do like 200 other countries around the world and do so as a self-governing independent nation,” Daniel Miller, president of the Texas Nationalist Movement, told AFP.

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Miller insists his movement, created in 2005, has never been so close to achieving its goal.

Although the secession movement failed to put up Texit on the GOP primary ballot despite producing what it claimed were 140,000 voter signatures, this is the closest the group has come in nearly two decades.

“The Texas nationalist movement is able to strike a chord with Republican primary voters with the idea of Texas being a unique state. So while support among Texas Republicans for secession is very low, there is support for the idea of Texas having more autonomy," Rice University political science professor Mark Jones told KERA News.

Let’s take a closer look.

When Texas was a country

Texas was a part of Mexico in the 19th Century. However, after the Texas Revolution in 1836, it declared independence and became a sovereign country.

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Nine years later, Texas joined the US as the 28th state.

Texas Nationalist Movement’s Miller told AFP that Texas shares history and interests with the rest of the United States but, like independence advocates in Spain’s Catalan region, feels the central government does not understand their problems.

As Americans prepare to vote in November, most likely choosing between Biden and Donald Trump, the Texas independence movement wants the state legislature to pass a law allowing a referendum on breaking away.

However, Texas cannot ditch the US just like that as there is no such clause in the country’s Constitution. Notably, the secession of Southern states including Texas in 1861 had led to the Civil War, the bloodiest war in US history.

Texans or Americans?

Just 26 per cent of people surveyed by the Texas Politics Project this month said they identified as Texan first and American second, compared to 27 per cent who felt that way in 2014.

Another poll by Newsweek found that 67 percent of Texans want the state to continue to be a part of the US.

Misty Walters, a homemaker in her 50s who attended a speech by Miller at a typical Texas barbecue restaurant, said people in the state feel they are Texans first, then Americans.

“We’re absolutely just being invaded,” she said of the record numbers of people pouring over the border, many from Central America, in what has become a key issue in the November US presidential election .

“And Texas needs to stand up and protect its citizens better,” said Walters.

There has long been a secessionist movement in Texas, but it has been and remains a fringe movement, Joshua Blank, the research director at the Texas Politics Project of the University of Texas at Austin, told AFP.

He said the border crisis between Texas and the federal government “has created a situation that I think this group has really looked to exploit, in order to make their views seem not only more mainstream but really more plausible than they really are,” Blank added.

According to Blank, the separatist movement is mostly driven by the “idea that there is a uniform American culture that is often related to whiteness”.

“And to the extent that there is a crisis at the border, it raises fears for people for whom this idea of American culture is somehow valid,” he said.

The rift between Texas Governor and White House

In the town of Eagle Pass in far southern Texas, Governor Abbott took military control of an area called Shelby Park along the Rio Grande River separating the state from Mexico. It is the site of a high-profile standoff with the federal government.

The governor, accusing the Biden administration of failing to stop huge numbers of people from entering the state, has had razor wire placed along parts of the frontier.

Biden in turn has sued Texas, insisting that border control has always fallen under federal jurisdiction.

Miller, the independence leader, compares the current situation to events in 1835 when Texas was still part of Mexico.

Texas refused to return a cannon that Mexico had lent it and flew a flag that read “Come and take it,” triggering Texas’s successful war of independence.

As with the cannon, tensions around the Eagle Pass park are part of a much bigger problem, said Miller.

He called it a symbol of “a broken relationship between the federal government and the states.”

Can Texas secede from the US? 

Not peacefully, at least.

While Miller thinks it can, Blank told AFP: “Texas would not be able to secede peacefully. The US would not negotiate with them on favorable terms.”

With inputs from AFP