If Texans are harmed due to President Trump’s travel ban being held up in court, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will hold opponents of the travel ban responsible, he told The Daily Caller.

“The people who have tried to stop [the travel ban] from happening, I think they own it,” Paxton said, adding that “blood would be on their hands,” if Texans are harmed by people who would have been kept out by the ban. “That’s the whole point. You look at what’s going on in Europe, as Texas attorney general, our effort is to stop them from coming here and it can happen, we know it.”

“It’s happened here before and in Canada, Florida, California, New York, so we all know it can happen. So lets do everything we can to stop this. and you notice the numbers when it comes to traveling, related to the travel ban, they’re down 50 percent from what they were last year so it is having some impact even though the courts, in my opinion, have inappropriately tied it up,” Paxton continued. “By the way, you know that there have been 44 total travel bans since 1980 by presidents, and these are the only two that the courts have ever stopped. Obama did six; no one cared about those.”

Paxton made those comments in an interview with TheDC on Friday, just days before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld on Monday an injunction of President Trump’s second travel ban, which was re-written in response to the first travel ban being blocked in court. Paxton signed onto an amicus brief in support of the travel ban. (RELATED: 9th Circuit upholds injunction on Trump’s travel ban)

“This is an important issue in our state, Texas, and important to other states because we have other states involved and we never felt like the courts were actually focusing on the law,” Paxton explained. “They were focusing on constitutional arguments that really didn’t make a lot of sense and also they were not using the four corners of the document or the statute, they were focusing on campaign statements from Donald Trump so we tried to make that point in our arguments.”

Amanda Tidwell contributed to this report.