“We’re about to change the way that Texas addresses the challenges along the border, and we’re going to start by helping these 34 counties [along the border] respond by increasing arrests,” Abbott announced in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “We got a new game in town in the state of Texas that’s going to begin next week.”
Enough’s enough
With the border crisis – which the Biden administration has refused to call a crisis, but rather a “challenge” – only getting worse since President Joe Biden took office and designated Vice President Kamala Harris the border czar – Abbott has had enough of waiting on the Democrats in Washington to bring the worsening situation under control.
“[T]he Republican governor made it clear that Texas will do everything it can to defend itself from the unprecedented masses of illegal immigrants flooding the border and seeking to take advantage of the Biden administration’s tax policies,” The Western Journal reported.
Instead of refusing to protect citizens from the border surge as the Biden administration has done since taking office, Abbott is taking the security of his state into his own hands by enforcing the law of the land.
“The law that I’m going to use will be legal ways in which Texas is going to start arresting everybody coming across the border,” the Republican governor continued. “Not just arresting them, but because this is now going to be aggravated trespass, they’re going to be spending a half a year in jail – if not a year in jail – as well as other actions that I will be announcing next week.”
This announcement came just days after Abbott made a disaster declaration.
“[T]he ongoing surge of individuals unlawfully crossing the Texas-Mexico border poses [a disaster because it is] an ongoing and imminent threat of widespread and severe damage, injury, and loss of life and property,” the declaration issued Monday reads.
The severity of the border problem was also expressed in an earlier interview the governor had with Newsmax, which he posted on Twitter.
“You hear about disaster declarations for hurricanes, [but] this is the first time that I’m aware of where I had to declare a disaster for 34 counties along the border because of the crisis because of so many people coming across the border,” Abbott said in the video he tweeted. “And you have cartels organizing efforts where ranchers’ property and their fences are torn down, their livestock is let out, their homes are damaged, their cars are broken into, their neighborhoods are dangerous, and we are going to instill safety.”
“We are going to be doing things in Texas that no state has ever done before when it comes to cracking down on anybody coming across the border. We’re going to step up and secure the border.”
Continuing to clean up Biden’s mess
This is not the first time Abbott has attempted to bring the border crisis under control while the White House paid it little more than lip service.
“[Abbott] deployed more than 1,000 public safety officers and National Guardsmen to help combat rampant drug and human trafficking at the border as part of Operation Lone Star earlier in the year, and the Biden administration has essentially abdicated any responsibility for the ongoing crisis,” the Journal recounted.
Still receiving no relief months later from the Biden administration, Abbott took to Twitter Thursday afternoon to announce that “Texas has stepped up to do Biden’s job at the border.”
It is argued that after five months in office, Biden is more interested in catering to the far-left’s radical immigration agenda than in protecting the lives and livelihoods of American citizens.
“Whether it be his reimplementation of catch-and-release, his systematic resettlement of illegals throughout the American Heartland or his outright refusal to build a barrier to aid Border Patrol officers in their mission, Biden has made one thing astoundingly clear: He does not care about the border crisis or the Americans hurt most by it,” the Journal argued.Bottom of Form
Damage already done
With VP Harris having gone 70 days without a news conference since being appointed to handle the border crisis, Abbott is using his declaration to make all state and local law enforcement available to fight “criminal activity and property damage” ushered in by Biden’s pro-immigration policy.
"President Biden's open-border policies have paved the way for dangerous gangs and cartels, human traffickers and deadly drugs like fentanyl to pour into our communities," Abbott proclaimed in a statement Thursday. "Meanwhile, landowners along the border are seeing their property damaged and vandalized on a daily basis while the Biden administration does nothing to protect them."
The Texas Republican noted the extent to which his state has had to clean up Biden’s border mess over the past few months.
“[The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) has] made over 1,300 criminal arrests, apprehended over 35,000 illegal migrants and seized over 10,000 pounds of drugs and over 100 firearms [since March]," Abbott said, according to Fox News.
It was also noted that from January to April, the DPS confiscated nearly 100 pounds of the opioid fentanyl – 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine – an amount that can produce 21.5 million lethal doses.
