There is a lot of focus on Title 42 and the surge in illegal immigration its ending will bring. The policy was a “health measure” that was never supposed to be the solution to the immigration crisis. I know — I went into federal court as Arizona’s attorney general to keep it in place because it was one of the few tools available to stop an even greater crisis at our southern border. But as I’ve said repeatedly, Title 42 cannot be a substitute for thorough, substantive reform. And without the federal government's willingness to create and enforce policies that deter illegal immigration, every state will continue to be a border state.

The reality is the Biden administration rescinded Trump administration policies that were working to curtail illegal immigration. Instead of focusing on enforcing the law, President Joe Biden and his administration created “interim” guidance policies that allowed criminals to remain in our country, failed to pick up and deport felons released from state custody, and began “paroling” record amounts of people who illegally entered our country. In a few short years, Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have effectively decriminalized law-breaking at our southern border.

Last year, I led an effort and argued at the Supreme Court, trying to stop the Biden administration from revoking a rule that limited government benefits to U.S. citizens. Apparently, Biden does not realize it is not only unfair to taxpayers to provide welfare benefits and free hotel rooms to immigrants who’ve illegally entered our country, but it creates even more incentives for people to break the law.

This is worth bearing in mind as this administration talks about sending troops and more resources to the southern border. Biden would like to pretend his administration cares about enforcing the law, but in reality, the message he has sent since day one of his presidency is that there will be no long-term consequences for breaking the law. The administration has even proposed a rule that would allow the Department of Homeland Security to circumvent the courts and unilaterally grant asylum to illegal immigrants.

Instead of undermining federal immigration judges by providing DHS bureaucrats new authority, why doesn’t the Biden administration send additional prosecutors and judges to our southern border to prosecute and adjudicate illegal entry cases? Both the Bush and Obama administrations at times took an aggressive approach to prosecuting illegal entry cases, and they saw a decline in unlawful crossings.

But this is about more than the millions of people who have entered our country illegally since Biden became president. We would do well to remember that the cartels are making millions of dollars every day off of the smuggling of people and drugs across our southern border. In just the past six years, fentanyl has gone from being involved in 4% of overdose deaths in Arizona to more than half. Sadly, more than 100,000 people across the country were poisoned by the cartels flooding drugs across our border in the last year.

These are dangerous drugs whose precursor chemicals are sent from China to the cartels. So while the cartels enrich themselves and Mexico drifts closer toward becoming a narco-state, China is using this crisis as an opportunity to undermine its greatest geopolitical rival: the United States. For the Chinese, drug trafficking is just war by another means.

I myself am a first-generation American. The day people don’t want to come here, we will have a problem. But the very thing that made our country great, the rule of law, is being systematically undermined by the cartels and the lawlessness at our southern border. And it’s hard to imagine any productive path to citizenship that begins with law-breaking.

While the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington make excuses and blame each other, hard-working people continue to suffer — and they’ve seen enough.

So what should be done? If the Biden administration refuses to surge law enforcement resources to our southern border, each state should exercise its authority to declare an invasion pursuant to Article I, Section 10 and Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution.

States acting independently likely will not solve the border crisis. But with members of the public dying every day as the result of open-border policies and the cartels seizing operational control of our southern border, it’s time to send a clear message to the federal government: Either do your job, or the states will be forced to do it for you.

Mark Brnovich served as Arizona's 26th attorney general.