Former Acting ICE Director Tom Homan had a history lesson for Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who announced this week that he would oppose President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border.

As the southern border begins to implode once again, Homan appeared on Fox News on Tuesday to say that if Congress is not going to act to secure the border, something needs to be done.

Fox News host Charles Payne pointed to what he describes as a principled stand on presidential powers from Paul, asking Homan to respond.

“I respect Rand Paul but here’s where I think the issue is — is there a national security [issue] or not? But some of the Republican congressmen I hear saying, ‘Well we don’t want to do this because the Democratic president could do the same to us a couple of years down the road,’” Homan replied. “They’ve already done it!”

“President Barack Obama did it with DACA,” he explained. “He said he couldn’t do it, it wasn’t constitutional.”

“He did it anyway,” Homan continued, “went around Congress to give amnesty to 800,000 people and where was the anger there from the Democratic Party? They’ve already done it. I think playing nice is over.”

“I think there’s a national security crisis on the border and we’ve got to solve it,” he concluded. “We’ve got to support this president trying to fix it.”

Paul became the fourth Republican senator to support the Democratic Party’s effort to reject a national emergency on the border declared by President Trump, which all but assures the resolution will pass, setting up a certain veto from the president.

McConnell is expected to allow a vote sometime in mid-March on a resolution that has already passed in the Pelosi-run House.

With 47 senators caucusing with the Democratic Party — Sens. Bernie Sanders, from Vermont, and Angus King, from Maine, are independent — four votes from across the aisle gives them 51 votes.

Paul joins the usual suspects, Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, along with Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C.

If only these Republicans could only find their alleged principles when it comes to doing something about our porous southern border, Trump would not have to take matters into his own hands.

For what it’s worth, talk radio host Mark Levin, a constitutional scholar, ripped Paul on social media, tweeting: “Phony constitutionalist Rand Paul. Pathetic.”

Meanwhile, as Democrats and their media allies insist there’s no emergency on the southern border, even the New York Times is admitting otherwise, reporting Tuesday that the southern border is at a “breaking point” with 76,000 migrants being detained in February alone, many of them women and children from Central America.