Democratic gubernatorial candidate Cinde Warmington used Wednesday’s Executive Council meeting to make her case against sending Granite State National Guardsmen to the U.S.-Mexico border.
But a key part of her evidence was a story that has been long debunked about border enforcement in Texas.
Gov. Chris Sununu is sending 15 members of the state’s National Guard to Eagle Pass, Texas, to support Gov. Greg Abbott’s efforts to slow the flow of illegal immigrants. His request for $850,000 was approved by the Fiscal Committee last week, funding that doesn’t come under the purview of the Executive Council.
Warmington, the only Democrat on the five-member Council, accused Sununu of making his funding request under the state’s emergency powers laws in order to circumvent the body.
“That’s why you exercised emergency powers when there’s six weeks before they’re deployed,” Warmington said to Sununu during the Executive Council meeting. “When you had time to have a public hearing on this. When you could have had time to bring this to the Council. You chose not to.”
Warmington used the appearance of the National Guard’s adjutant general, Maj. Gen. David Mikolaities, on an unrelated matter, to raise questions about the deployment.
“Gov. Abbott of Texas has taken the position that Texas law supersedes federal law when it comes to border security. So will the New Hampshire National Guard have to follow Gov. Abbott’s orders even if they’re contrary to federal law?” Warmington asked Mikolaites.
Mikolaites demurred, saying that was a question for a military attorney. But he confirmed that generally speaking, “We follow the rules of the laws of that state or federal government, whichever supersedes. That’s just how we do it. We’re not concerned, per se, about that.”
But Warmington claimed to be concerned, and she used what she said was an event from the Texas border to argue that her fellow Granite Staters should be, too.
“Last month, the Texas National Guard physically barred U.S. Border Patrol Agents from accessing the U.S. border when they were called by Mexican authorities for a distress call for people — a mother and two children — who were swimming in the river.
“They physically barred the Border Patrol from accessing the river. Three people drowned in that incident. And my question is, would our New Hampshire National Guard, if ordered, would have to bar others from accessing the border?”
In fact, the incident Warmington described didn’t happen, and the story — widely reported by left-leaning media outlets like NPR and MSNBC — was debunked by the Biden Department of Justice and the government of Mexico a month ago.
According to a filing by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, “a Mexican official notified the U.S that three migrants — a woman and two children — had drowned roughly an hour earlier while traversing the river.”
The Texas Military Department (TMD) reported, “At the time that Border Patrol requested access, the drownings had occurred, Mexican authorities were recovering the bodies, and Border Patrol expressed these facts to the TMD personnel on site.”
Contacted by NHJournal about her statement, and links to the reports, Warmington declined to issue a correction or comment on the story.
As Warmington grilled the adjutant general, Sununu interrupted to accuse her of using the Council meeting to advance her candidacy for governor.
“This is not an opportunity for you to campaign. You can talk to the press after the Council meeting. This is not campaign time,” Sununu said.
“This is not a campaign. This is our National Guard,” Warmington shot back. “This is the use of our National Guard. And I’m asking if they’re going to have to follow orders that are in violation of federal law. And what the governor of Texas has said is, ‘I’ve already declared an invasion to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself.’”
Abbott’s position, as described by Warmington, has been endorsed by 28 attorneys general and other state officials, including New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella.
“The Constitution’s Guarantee Clause requires that the federal government… must ‘protect each [state] against invasion.’ But it has abandoned its duty. Nothing in the Constitution stops Texas from stepping up and doing its part to protect itself, and in so doing also protecting states across the country,” Formella and the other officials wrote.
Immigration continues to be a hot topic in the governor’s race, with Republicans Kelly Ayotte and Chuck Morse supporting Sununu’s decision to send Guardsmen to Texas, and Democrats Warmington and former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig opposing the idea.
The two Democrats are regularly facing questions about their current stance on sanctuary city policies they have supported in the past. Both have repeatedly declined to respond.
