Sid Miller, the former Chair of the Texas House Homeland Security & Public Safety and Agriculture and Livestock Committees, and now the frontrunner in the Republican race for Texas Agriculture Commissioner, said today that the Bureau of Land Management’s decision to halt their forced removal of Cliven Bundy’s cattle in Nevada was only a temporary delay in the federal agencies attempt to violate the private property and water rights of Americana and warned Texans to remain vigilant against future BLM abuses.

Miller went further, calling on Texas Governor Rick Perry to mobilize the Texas State Guard, if necessary, in order to prevent the Federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from seizing 90,000 acres of land along a 116 mile stretch of the Red River.

Miller said that televised images of armed federal agents attempting a forced cattle round-up on a rural Nevada range have alarmed farmers, ranchers, and landowners, as well ordinary citizens across the Southwest. Miller says the actions of the BLM are unlawful and have ignited a new range war—this one between law-abiding citizens and their own federal government.

In Nevada, the roundup started last week, after the BLM and National Park Service shut down an area half the size of Delaware to let cowhands using helicopters and vehicles gather about 900 cattle that officials say were trespassing. Cliven Bundy, 67, and his large family cast their resistance to the roundup as a constitutional stand. He said he didn’t recognize federal authority over state land.

Although the BLM announced yesterday that they were backing down from what became a stand-off between Bundy and his supporters and heavily armed BLM agents, the dispute has widened into a debate about states’ rights and federal land-use policy. The dispute that triggered the roundup dates to 1993, when the BLM cited concern for the federally protected tortoise. The agency later revoked Bundy’s grazing rights. Bundy claims ancestral rights to graze his cattle on lands his family settled in the 19th century.

Miller says that BLM agents used excessive and unlawful force to exert their will and unnecessarily inflamed passions, putting lives as well as private property and state rights at risk. Miller said that especially disturbing was the BLM efforts to restrict supporters of Bundy to so-called “free speech zones.”

“Barack Obama may not understand the concept, but our founding fathers understood that the entire United States of America is a constitutionally protected “free speech zone,” Miller said.

In Texas, Miller says the BLM is attempting a repeat of an action taken over 30 years ago along the Red River when Tommy Henderson lost a federal lawsuit. The Bureau of Land Management took 140 acres of his property and didn’t pay him one cent.

Now, Miller says that BLM is attempting to use Henderson’s case as a precedent to seize land along a 116-mile stretch of the Red River. “They’re wanting to take the boundaries that the courts placed here and extend those east and west to the forks of the river north of Vernon and east to the 98th Meridian which is about 20 miles east of us,” Henderson explained. The BLM clams this land never belonged to Texas.

Sid Miller says that both he and the Texas landowners who have lived and cared for that land for hundreds of years beg to differ. BLM plans on taking the land anyway. Property owners will be forced to spend money on lawsuits to keep what is theirs. For many, that property has been in their family for generations and landowners not only have deeds to the property, but they have also paid property taxes for over one hundred years according to Miller. About 90,000 acres could be seized by BLM, disappearing across a new state line.

Miller said that if the BLM attempts to use the same kind of tactics in Texas that they have used in Nevada to unlawfully seize privately held land, that Texas Governor Rick Perry should mobilize the Texas State Guard to prevent them from doing so.

“What Barack Obama and his armed BLM agents did in Nevada is the worst violation of the tenth amendment and individual states rights I have seen in my lifetime,” said Miller.

“As Agriculture Commissioner, I will go to war with these out-of-control federal agents and bureaucrats who have no regard for the United States Constitution or state and individual rights,” Miller said.

“In the meantime, I would urge Rick Perry to be prepared to activate the Texas State Guard in order to defend the State of Texas and her citizens from an abusive federal government.

Miller said that the mission of the Texas State Guard (TXSG) is to provide mission-ready military forces to assist state and local authorities in times of state emergencies; to conduct homeland security and community service activities. They are not a part of the United States Armed Forces and are not subject to orders from the President.

“What happened in Nevada this week could very well happen in Texas next week and our citizens and their property have a right to protection. If not, we might as well as throw out our constitution and the concept of private property rights. We must always be vigilant against federal overreach. We must act now and we must act decisively,” Miller concluded.