WATCH: Texas Governor Says Biden Administration Completely Abandoned Enforcing Immigration Laws
Texas Governor Greg Abbott met on Saturday with a contingent of Texas sheriffs to discuss their concerns about the current border crisis’s impact on counties within the state. According to Abbott, the necessity of such workshops is caused by the current administration’s abandonment of efforts to enforce immigration laws that were passed by the United States Congress.
Governor Abbott heard commentary from several sheriffs from different regions of the state who expressed concern with the increasing levels of arrests made in connection to the current migrant surge along the border. Issues discussed also included the heightened level of danger to the public as a result of high-speed pursuits on Texas highways.
At the conclusion of the event, Abbott expressed his dismay at the current administrations handling of the crisis. “The bottom line is, because of the current administration’s complete abandonment of enforcing the laws passed that were passed by the United States Congress, concerning immigration, there is an unprecedented increase in people coming across the border,” the Texas governor told the group of Sheriffs. He concluded, saying, “Even though the federal government may have abandoned their responsibility, we have not.”
“President Biden’s open border policies have led to a disaster on our border, and the State of Texas is stepping up in the federal government’s absence to keep our communities safe,” the governor told the sheriffs. “Our efforts would not be possible without our partnership with local law enforcement. With their support, we are working tirelessly to stop the influx of unlawful immigrants and prevent the smuggling of contraband into the state.”
“But more help is needed, which is why I called for legislation this Special Session to provide more border security funding for law enforcement and counties,” Abbott continued. “This funding will help us better step up to meet this challenge and gives our border communities the resources and support they need. I strongly urge the legislature to take up this issue, and I thank our law enforcement partners for their continued efforts to secure the border.”
Several sheriffs expressed concern regarding challenges facing their jails reaching maximum detention capacity. Abbott offered a potential solution to this issue through the installation of soft-sided facilities to quickly create more detention space. The increase in arrests is the result of heightened law enforcement presence under Operation Lone Star, launched by the Governor in March.
This operation involved the deployment of 1,000 Texas Department of Public Safety Troopers and Texas Army National Guard troops to the border area.
The operation resulted in an increase in arrests of not only narcotics and human traffickers, but also those facing warrants and parole or probation violations.
Abbott promised the attendees his Border Security Project Team would continue to work to meet the demands the crisis is placing on local communities throughout the state.
The following sheriff’s attended the Governors briefing:
- Sheriff Clint McDonald, Executive Director of the Texas Border Sheriffs Coalition
- Sheriff Oscar Carrillo, Culberson County
- Sheriff Brad Coe, Kinney County
- Sheriff Ray Del Bosque, Zapata County
- Sheriff Danny Dominguez, Presidio County
- Deputy Sheriff Hugo Garza, Dimmit County
- Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez, Val Verde County
- Sheriff Eusevio Salinas, Zavala County
- Sheriff Kelly Rowe, Lubbock County
- Sheriff Roy Boyd, Goliad County
- Sheriff Emmett Shelton. McMullen County
“Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw, Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd, and Adjutant General of Texas Tracy Norris, joined Governor Abbott in the briefing.
Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol. Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.
Mo Brooks: Wage Suppression is ‘#1 Priority of US Chamber of Commerce’
DALLAS, Texas — U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) says Republicans should have a simple position on illegal immigration: stand up for American workers.
“Republicans need to have the courage to stand up for the average American,” Brooks, a candidate for U.S. Senate, told Breitbart News at CPAC Dallas, “and quit catering to entities like the United States Chamber of Commerce who are hellbent on punishing Americans by suppressing their wages and taking jobs from them and handing them over to illegal aliens or lawful visa workers.”
“This is the Number 1 priority of the United States Chamber of Commerce: the suppression of wages, hurting American families and we need Republicans who are willing to stand up to that and do what’s in the best interest of America,” he said.
The Chamber, often derided as an organ of the Republican Party, raised eyebrows in the 2020 election when it endorsed 23 Democrats for reelection, The Hill reported.
In February, Chamber CEO Thomas Donohue praised President Joe Biden’s rollback of a number of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies:
We commend President Biden for taking action to ensure the reunification of separated families, address irregular migration across the Southern Border, and improve the functionality of our nation’s immigration system by conducting a top-to-bottom review of barriers to our legal immigration system. Policies adopted over the past several years have undermined critical employment-based visa programs and significantly hindered many different companies’ ability to expand their domestic operations and create jobs for Americans. President Biden’s order to coordinate immigration policy through the White House and his effort to ensure that legal immigration is fair and efficient are a clear indication of the priority his administration has placed on fixing our broken immigration system. We look forward to working with the Biden Administration to address these critical issues.
Brooks told Breitbart News new people need to be elected to the White House and Congress to fix the problems at the southern border.
“Our elected officials have made a lot of bad decisions and Americans have suffered as a consequence,” he said.
Brooks said roughly 2,000 Americans die each year at the hands of illegal aliens.
“If we had a secure southern border, that’s 2,000 Americans who would be alive each year,” but are not because of the porous border with Mexico. He said another 30,000 Americans die annually from drug overdoses.
“Where is the sympathy?” for them, he wondered.
“If you’re going to be an elected official for Americans, you would think that the lives of Americans would have some degree of priority,” Brooks said.
So far, it does not appear Brooks’s Democrat colleague would agree.
In June, U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) stood at the southern border and likened it to the port of entry for Europeans a century ago.
“Welcome to El Paso. Welcome to my community, to the new Ellis Island, to the capital of the border,” Escobar told Vice President Kamala Harris during a brief visit.
Kyle Olson is a reporter for Breitbart News. He is also host of “The Kyle Olson Show,” syndicated on Michigan radio stations on Saturdays–download full podcast episodes. Follow him on Parler.
WATCH: Texas Ranchers Discuss Dangers, Costs of Border Crisis
Texas ranchers say changes in immigration and border security policies by the Biden administration created chaos, danger, and personal costs to those living along the Texas border with Mexico. Record migrant crossings leave residents as far as a hundred miles from the border scrambling to keep up with the damages caused to their property.
“The folks along the border will tell you that they have always dealt with illegals but this is different,” Texas Farm Bureau President Russell Boening told Breitbart Texas. ” The sheer magnitude and number of people moving through is overwhelming. The brashness and expectations of the people is different than years ago.”
Boening said ranchers in South Texas are dealing with three main issues in regard to the border crisis. Those include economic losses from damages to gates, fences, crops, and other property being destroyed by human smugglers as they flee from law enforcement. They also include concerns for the safety of their families and employees.
Texas ranchers who live not only along the border, but as far inland as 100 miles, tell the stories of their experiences with the migrants and the damages inflicted on their property.
Rancher Stephanie Crisp-Canales said her ranch is located more than 60 miles from the Mexican border. “It has never been this bad down here,” she said. “Despite what the media reports — doesn’t report — there is a crisis going on down here.”
She described life on her ranch and the damages caused by what are referred to as bailouts. Bailouts are what happens at the end of a law enforcement pursuit when the smuggler will drive through the ranchers’ gates and fences forcing expensive repairs on the ranchers and endangering the public traveling on the roadways.
“They plow through our fences, they plow through our gates,” Crisp-Canales explained. “They either will wreck the vehicle or they will purposely stop the vehicle, and everybody in that vehicle bails.”
She said the ranchers now must bear the cost of repairing their gates and fences. They are also liable for any accidents caused by cattle getting out onto the roadways.
She also explained the dangers to their cattle from the garbage left behind by those being smuggled through the ranchlands. She said they must also be vigilant anytime they stop to open a gate as migrants will hide and attempt to steal their vehicles.
Brian King, a farmer near the border in Dimmit County showed some of the damages caused to his fences by human smugglers operating in the area.
“We went from, during the last six years, a few incidences of people running through our fences and illegal aliens crossing our place to now, it being a weekly occurrence,” King said while standing in front of a recently damaged fence. “They came in off the highway back there and ran through this fence.”
He explained this one incident will cost about $1,500 to repair. “It’s been a weekly occurrence now for the last four months,” King stated.
Bill Martin, another rancher in Dimmit County, said, “I have been a rancher in Dimmit County all of my life and this is just about the worst I have ever seen in traffic coming through from the border.”
Martin said he encounters migrants seeking directions to Carrizo Springs, Texas, on a daily basis.
“Practically daily, I have water issues,” he explained. “I found a water line that was left running.
“They opened a valve and let the water run out into a dirt tank,” the rancher said. “If I hadn’t found it, it would have shorted out a pressure pump. That would have cost me about $1,500. But luckily, I got there.”
“Fences have been run through and houses have been broken into,” Martin stated. “Prior to this year, I bet I went two years without seeing a single illegal. In the past two weeks, I saw more than I saw in the past two years.”
“We can’t keep gates closed,” he said. “We can keep water sources where they need to be.”
Recently, Texas Governor Greg Abbott asked farmers and ranchers in South Texas to keep track of the costs associated with migrant smuggling through their ranches, Breitbart Texas reported.
“I strongly encourage Texas landowners along the border to report any personal property damages they incur due to unlawful immigration, by completing the Self Reporting Damage Survey, our state will be equipped with the necessary data to continue addressing the ongoing crisis at our southern border and provide the support our landowners and communities need to stay safe and secure,” the Texas governor said in a written statement.
The Farm Bureau’s Russell Boening explained that it is not just the cost to the ranchers and farmers that concerns them. It is also the inhumane treatment of the migrants themselves at the hands of the cartel-connected smugglers.
“They are often lied to by the human smugglers,” Boening said. “They are left to fend for themselves if they can’t keep up. This often happens to children.”
“I’m sure you saw the incident where 5 children under the age of 11 were found abandoned by a landowner,” he continued. “And then if they do make it, where do they end up? Set up with gangs, forced into prostitution?”
In May, a Texas rancher near Eagle Pass, Texas, found five little girls who had been abandoned on their ranch. The smugglers left the girls, all under the age of six, with no food, water, or adults to care for them, Breitbart’s Randy Clark reported.
Rancher Kate Hobbs showed the conditions in which they found the little girls.
“The influx across the border is out of control, and the Biden Administration has shown that is not going to step up and do its job,” Abbott told Breitbart Texas in a one-on-one interview a few hours ahead of his Border Security Summit on Thursday. “And, amidst reports of even more people coming in across the border, we know we have to step up and do more.”
Abbott told President Trump during a recent border visit that during Operation Lone Star, Texas law enforcement officers have already arrested nearly 1,800 people for criminal violations of state law.
The governor said this is in addition to: “40,000 apprehensions of people who’ve come across the border illegally, and they have busted 41 stash houses.”
Boening explained how different the current border crisis is compared to previous spikes in border crossings.
“The brashness and expectations of the people is different than years ago,” the Farm Bureau president concluded. “We often hear about the unaccompanied minors and family units that actually give themselves up to authorities, but there are also groups of young male adults moving through carrying backpacks and accompanied by a coyote with an automatic weapon. Do we really think these folks are looking for asylum or work?”
More video interviews with ranchers from Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona may be found on the Texas Farm Bureau Border Crisis Impact page.
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook.
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