Texas Governor Abbott Steps Up Border Enforcement as Biden's Crisis Keeps Going

Uvalde, Texas, is about 70 miles from the border between Texas and Mexico at Del Rio.

A friend sent me a message over the weekend after a trip to the Texas town. There, my friend witnessed many young men from all over the world, clearly migrants, and spoke to several, finding out that some are from as far away as Morocco. Why are they there? The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) had a heavy presence but was only allowed to intervene if the migrants strayed onto private property.

Other friends report seeing buses fill up with migrants in towns several counties away from the border, taking load after load of migrants to places no one but the Biden administration seems to know where. They aren’t telling Congress or anyone else, and most of the media are content not to ask.

Things may be changing, as Texans are increasingly fed up with the Biden administration’s pathetic approach and turn to Gov. Greg Abbott for answers. On Sunday, Abbott announced a tough-sounding plan to secure the border:

"Gov. Abbott: Texas' New Border Plan 'Catch And Jail'

We have a new program contrary to the Biden plan to catch & release.

The Texas plan is to catch & to jail.

The National Guard & the Texas Dept. of Public Safety are deployed for the mission.https://t.co/5JepgPkav0

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) July 26, 2021

That’s the right message, but it needs to come from Washington as well as Texas. The border shouldn’t be a divisive political issue. It’s national security.

On Tuesday, Abbott announced he was empowering the Texas Guard and DPS to make more arrests.

I'm ordering @TexasGuard to assist @TxDPS in enforcing Texas law by arresting lawbreakers at the border.

More manpower is needed to enforce federal & state criminal laws including for criminal trespassing, illegal entry, smuggling, & human trafficking.https://t.co/SOd8lUBxat pic.twitter.com/OnwrEGa0zf

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) July 27, 2021

Devils lurk in the details. How many illegals can the Texas forces arrest and hold, when the federal government isn’t interested in enforcing the border? How long can they hold them before having to send them to federal custody, or just letting them go? How much will Biden’s dereliction of duty end up costing Texans?

Biden really isn’t interested in securing the border but is evidently feeling some pressure from red state Democrats. The Department of Homeland Security has announced that it’s resuming a successful Trump border policy — expedited removal of some families who enter illegally — and that’s fine but it’s also a drop in the bucket. It would likely have no effect on those men in Uvalde. It shouldn’t have taken six minutes, let alone six months, for Biden to reverse his disastrous border policy. His administration is still not telling anyone what it’s doing with the hundreds of thousands — close to a million now — that have been detained, and then shuttled around to points unknown and released.

Roughly 180,000 migrants are known to have entered each month since Biden’s inauguration. No one knows, of course, how many have gotten away after their bailouts and dashes away from law enforcement, or where they have gone, or whether any of them had COVID when they entered.

Joe Biden and his officials like to discuss COVID and the vaccine and masks, but the fact that he has yet to shut down the massive influx of untested illegal migrants at the border gives the whole game away. His policies have dramatically increased human trafficking and drug (especially fentanyl) trafficking–and may be a COVID super-spreader event. He’s leaving not just the border states but the entire country wide open. Biden’s CDC is pushing vaccinated citizens to wear masks in certain situations. But what about the million or more illegals who may be bringing COVID in hour by hour, day by day?

The border states such as Texas can only do so much when the federal government is choosing to neglect its basic duty to enforce the law.