At a “Border Security Summit” on Thursday afternoon, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced before a group of Texas sheriffs, police chiefs, county judges, and mayors that he would soon unveil plans to build a U.S.-Mexico border wall in Texas. He also reiterated that state troopers will start jailing people crossing the border illegally.
“There is one thing we know,” said Abbott in an opening statement, “A border crisis … is plaguing the farmers, the ranchers, the residents of the entire border region.”
Abbott pointed to the Biden administration’s de facto open-border policy as a cause of the challenges the Lone Star State is facing, and said that “change is needed to fix the border crisis problem.”
Abbot said there are a couple of factors that caused the massive 1,000-percent increase in state apprehensions of illegal border-crossers. The first was elimination of previous policies, which now allows people to come across the border more easily. Another thing was a lack of political commitment to secure the border. “Now, the commitment is anybody who wants to come in is going to be allowed to come in,” Abbott said, repeating, “A change is needed.”
Abbott went on to describe how international criminals — including drug cartels and human traffickers, who smuggle people from 160 countries into America — have profited from the situation.
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Two weeks ago, Abbott deployed more than 1,000 Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) troopers and National Guard members to the border as part of “Operation Lone Star” — an initiative he announced in March aimed at beefing up security at the border with troopers and National Guard. Abbott later expanded those efforts to also tackle human trafficking at the border, including a plan for DPS troopers and Texas Rangers to interview unaccompanied minors that cross the border to identify potential human-trafficking victims.
Despite all that effort, “much more is needed,” he said, because the migrants — including the criminal ones — will keep on coming.
“Only Congress and the president can fix our broken border…. But in the meantime, Texas is going to do everything possible, including beginning to make arrests, to keep our community safe.”
“The border crisis is no laughing matter,” Abbott added. “It’s not a tourism site for members of Congress to visit and then return to D.C. and do nothing.”
Abbott said that next week he will announce a plan for the state to begin building a wall along the border with Mexico, restarting construction that stopped when President Joe Biden took office. The governor suggested the barrier could provide a way for officials to arrest migrants who try to get past it.
Abbott also told the summit crowd that he would issue a new disaster declaration next week to create an enhanced security plan, noting that he had approved a $1 billion allocation in the state budget for border security. Abbott also invoked an Article 4 of the Texas Constitution to form the governor’s task force on border and homeland security.
State and local law enforcement generally do not have the authority to enforce federal immigration laws, but can provide direct assistance to federal agents to deter and detect criminal activity.
At the conference, Abbott announced plans to increase arrests along the border — and increase space inside local jails. The effort to jail migrants will require the cooperation of local mayors, law enforcement, prosecutors, and judges. It was noted that only single adults will be arrested.
“They don’t want to come across the state of Texas anymore because it’s not what they were expecting,” Abbott said before being met with applause from those at the conference. “It’s not the red carpet that the federal administration rolled out to them.”
The governor also announced an interstate compact with Arizona Governor Doug Ducey to resolve the border crisis and called on other states to follow suit.
“Our efforts will only be effective if we work together to secure the border, make criminal arrests, protect landowners, rid our communities of dangerous drugs, and provide Texans with the support they need and deserve,” he added. “This is an unprecedented crisis, and Texas is responding with the most robust and comprehensive border plan the nation has ever seen.”
Border officials stopped 180,034 people trying to enter the country illegally in May, which was up from 178,622 attempts in April and is the highest number in more than two decades.
On June 1, Abbott issued a disaster declaration along Texas’ southern border in response to the border crisis, providing more resources and strategies to combat the ongoing influx of unlawful immigrants, and blamed the Biden administration for paving the road for criminals who take advantage of the situation.
During his first day in office, Biden paused border-wall construction started under President Donald Trump and ordered a review of the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols — the “Remain in Mexico” policy that was formally terminated on June 1 — which required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their cases could be heard in U.S. immigration courts.
The Biden administration has referred to its new policies as a way to be more humane toward migrants.
