Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is accusing Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and President Joe Biden of being “in dereliction of duty” for the migrant crisis at the southern border.
In a recent broadcast interview, Abbott vowed that Texas would continue to “arrest and jail people who are coming across the border trespassing into areas into the state of Texas.”
Abbott continued, “Because the Biden administration is refusing to do its duty to enforce the laws of the United States, they have left Texas in no position other than for us to step up and do what we have to do.”
According to Gov. Abbott, as soon as officers from the Texas Dept. of Public Safety showed up at the border along with the National Guard, “hundreds if not thousands of vehicles, that is when the illegal migration stopped.
“That’s exactly what the Biden administration could do if they wanted.”
The town of “Del Rio was overrun by a population of [Haitian migrants] about the same size of Del Rio that had been coming across the border illegally,” Abbott charged.
“As governor, I’m not going to let that happen. I’m going to step up and do whatever I have to do to make sure that I protect the people of Del Rio as well as all these other communities in the state of Texas that the Biden administration is ignoring.”
Abbott continued saying it would be “the kind of thing that Texas is going to have to continue to do” and that in Texas, there would be no “catch and release.”
Magnet for migrants
“They have created a magnet that led to these massive groups of Haitians, as well as the other groups that are coming here for one reason, and that’s because they have sent a message and a signal to the entire world that they are not going to secure the border, they are going to allow them across.”
Abbott said that the Biden administration had knowledge of the Haitians who had gathered on the Mexican side of the border before they entered the U.S., and “the Biden administration did nothing to stop those Haitians who had gathered en masse in Mexico from coming across the border.”
Abbott then vowed that Texas would hire all Border Patrol agents who may be fired over images that the administration chastised in what was described as Border Patrol agents “whipping” Haitian immigrants while on horseback.
Brandon Judd, head of the National Border Patrol Council, believes that the focus on the “whipping” images was the Biden administration “trying to deflect off themselves for their failures which led to the catastrophe that’s taking place.”
Judd explained that no migrants were injured or hit and that the Border Patrol agents were not using whips or using their reins as whips.
“What they were holding were reins, they were not whips, those reins are used to control the horses. The agents also have to protect the migrants from the horses,” he said. “…they do not hit them, nor were any of those migrants hit by any object, let alone a whip or a rein.”
Mayorkas said he was “horrified” by what he saw in the horseback video. However, Judd believes that Mayorkas said what he said because “he has to toe the line or he’s out of a job, so of course he’s going to say what the White House wants him to say once they’ve made their official statement.”
“They [border patrol agents] wouldn’t have been in that situation had the Biden administration enforce the immigration laws and secure the border in the first place. The Democrats’ characterization of the border patrol using them as whipping people coming across the border is false. They were maneuvering horses,” Abbott said.
The governor continued, “I have worked side-by-side with those Border Patrol Agents. I want them to know something. If they are at risk of losing their job and a president who is abandoning his duty to secure the border, you have a job in the state of Texas, I will hire you to help Texas secure our border.”
