Several Texas counties have declared a border “invasion” and are hoping governor Greg Abbott will follow in their path and issue a similar declaration for the state.

“We’re being invaded. The facts are there,” said Kinney County Judge Tully Shahan at a press conference in Brackettville, Texas. “This is real. We want America to know this is real. America doesn’t know what’s happening here.”

The New York Post reports that the counties were contacted by Ken Cuccinelli, a former Trump Department of Homeland Security official, “who has talked them into believing they can use the ‘self-help provision of the Constitution to declare an invasion.”

“This gives the governor, decided similarly, the authority to repeal that invasion,” Cuccinelli said at the press conference Tuesday. County officials from Kinney, Goliad, Terrell and Uvalde Counties criticized the Biden Administration’s “open border policy.”

The Post writes “Cuccinelli claims now that the Kinney County Attorney, a legal authority has declared an invasion, Gov. Greg Abbott can “repeal” immigrants. He envisions a Title 42-style program, where immigrants– even those seeking asylum– are automatically deported if they cross into the Texas border.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has resisted calls by the same group, the Center for Renewing America, to declare an “invasion,” in the past, according to the Texas Tribune. The group has been known to reach out to states across the country “looking for any local government that would be4 willing to go along with it, the spokeswoman for the organization told The Post.”

While officials know declaring an invasion does not grant any legal authority, they hope it will at least bring attention to the border crisis. The Post reports of the press conference Tuesday:

The officials each shared stories of how their communities are being inundated by immigrants as humans and drugs are smuggled through their small towns on a daily basis.

The number of reported migrant encounters along the US-Mexico border once again made history in May — hitting a staggering 239,416 encounters, according to the latest available monthly Customs and Border Patrol statistics.