Texas will expand efforts to control land along the Mexican border, Abbott says
Embroiled in a legal battle with the Biden administration over immigration enforcement, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Sunday he was expanding efforts to establish state control over areas near the Rio Grande in an effort to deter migrants.
Mr. Abbott, flanked by 13 other Republican governors, said Texas would not limit its intensive efforts to the small city park along the river in Eagle Pass, where the state has taken over and is restricting access for federal agents. A senior Texas official said state law enforcement officials were also looking for land on a riverfront ranch north of the city that migrants continue to use to cross the border.
Texas has deployed National Guard troops and state police officers along the Texas border since 2021 and began stringing concertina wire along the river's banks the following year. What changed last month at the park, known as Shelby Park, is that Texas began preventing federal agents from routinely accessing the riverfront or using the park to detain and process large numbers of migrants.
“Right now, the Texas National Guard is conducting operations to expand these efforts,” Mr. Abbott said at a news conference in the park. “We are not going to limit ourselves to this park. We are expanding into other areas to ensure we increase our level of deterrence and denial of illegal entry into the United States.”
Mr. Abbott described the arrival of migrants as an “invasion” that gave Texas, under the U.S. Constitution, the ability to take on the task of enforcing immigration laws, an area that the Supreme Court has in the past given to the federal government left. Whether he has the power to do so is being disputed in court by the Biden administration.
A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The agency has previously said that it, not the state, is responsible for detaining and processing those who cross the border illegally.
The Republican governors met at the border as the Senate prepared to release details of its plan to address the high number of illegal border crossings, which exceeded 300,000 in December alone. The Biden administration has supported legislative action, but some Republicans appeared unwilling to move further after former President Donald J. Trump said so this would help the Democrats in November.
Several Texas Democrats said during a telephone news conference on Sunday that Mr. Abbott's meeting was about politics and not about a desire to fix the immigration system. “Democrats who support this call want to make migration more legal, orderly and humane,” said U.S. Rep. Greg Casar of Austin. “It is precisely these Republicans who want to keep it as dangerous and illegal as possible”
The assembled governors said they supported Texas in its confrontation with the federal government. As they spoke, dozens of National Guard troops stood silently with assault rifles strapped to their chests. “This is a fight we must all participate in,” said Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
“Montana stands with Texas in this fight,” said Montana Governor Greg Gianforte.
The nation's Republican governors seemed eager to join Texas in the ongoing legal battle. They are critical of what they say about the Biden administration's inability to control the border. Even in states as far away as South Dakota, immigration has been a top priority among Republicans and some Democrats in cities forced to find shelter for thousands of newcomers.
“This is not a campaign tactic,” Governor Brian Kemp, Republican of Georgia, said at the news conference on Sunday.
For many governors, it was not the first time they had stood at the border with Mr. Abbott. In October 2021, as the governor of Texas expanded his border enforcement program, known as Operation Lone Star, to include thousands of additional National Guard troops, gathered a group of Republican governors in Mission, Texas.
Several states, including Florida, Tennessee and South Dakota, have sent their own state police officers and National Guard troops to help patrol the border in Texas.
But Sunday's meeting comes at a much more tense time along the border. Not only is Texas fighting to keep the concertina wire it has built in some areas, but the state is also preparing to enforce a new state law, set to take effect in March, that will make it a state crime to enter Texas from Mexico without permission. The Biden administration has challenged the new law in court; a hearing on whether to stop enforcement is scheduled for Feb. 13.
The governors met a day after hundreds of people gathered for a rally at a ranch north of Eagle Pass after arriving in a convoy traveling through Texas, one of several through the Southwest to draw attention to the situation at the border. At the meeting, some said they feared the country's heated political division over immigration could lead to violence.
Mr Abbott said any suggestion of violence over the standoff with the federal government was a “false narrative”.
“All we do is enforce the laws of the United States of America,” he said.
The number of border crossings in the Eagle Pass area has dropped significantly since the state took over Shelby Park in January, Texas officials said. Federal Border Police agents have not been completely kept out of the park by the state; they still have limited access to launch boats and respond to emergencies. But they were not allowed to patrol.
Most migrants seek to immediately turn themselves over to Border Patrol agents for processing and a chance to remain in the United States while their immigration case is processed. But many people around Shelby Park have instead been arrested by state police on trespassing charges, which can delay and sometimes complicate their efforts to seek asylum from federal authorities.
Mike Banks, a special adviser to Mr. Abbott on border issues, said in an interview after the news conference that the state wanted to similarly defeat Border Patrol agents in other areas along the river.
“We will continue to expand in that way and do everything we can to stop illegal immigration at the border, on the river,” Mr. Banks said. “It's fair to say that we're going to go wherever illegal immigration is happening and we're going to hit them at the point of entry to prevent them from coming into the country.”