Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) announced he is sending members of the Florida National Guard to Texas to help Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R-TX) mission to defend the southern border.

DeSantis reestablished the Florida State Guard, a civilian emergency response force under his control, in 2022 and will deploy troops in an effort to “stop the invasion” at the U.S.-Mexico border. He’ll also send up to a battalion, as many as 1,000 Florida National Guard soldiers, to the southern border. 

These deployments come as Texas is fighting the Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the Biden administration, telling agents to remove concertina wire installed along the Rio Grande. Abbott has told the Texas National Guard to hold the line, while Republican lawmakers expressed their solidarity.  

“We have stepped up probably more than any other state and were proud to do that. However, we don’t think this is enough. I believe that a state has a right to fortify its own borders,” DeSantis said during a press conference in Jacksonville on Thursday. “If Texas is helping to erect barriers, putting up razor wire, doing other things to keep illegal aliens out, I want to be helpful with them doing that.”

Florida is one of 26 states that have backed Texas’s legal defiance against the Biden administration, emphasized in a letter sent on Monday to President Joe Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Texas and Florida have been chartering planes and buses of immigrants to sanctuary cities, causing Democratic leaders to call on Biden for federal assistance. 

“We are gonna fortify our presence along the southern border. We’re providing up to one battalion of the Florida National Guard, as well as our first-ever deployment of the Florida State Guard. And the goal is to help Texas fortify this border, help them strengthen the barricades, help them add barriers, help them add the wire that they need to so that we can stop this invasion once and for all,” DeSantis added. 

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The additional deployments are on top of the 90 officers from various state agencies already at the southern border, such as the Florida Highway Patrol, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

The Washington Examiner reached out to Abbott’s office for comment.