Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott didn’t seem to be impressed with President Joe Biden’s recent brief visit to the southern border.
Abbott said Biden’s visit was “$20 billion too little and two years too late.”
I asked Gov Abbott why he decided to greet Biden in El Paso today. Here’s what he said: https://t.co/UTxLUHrTY9@DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/bhBePGPUDj
— Jennie Taer (@JennieSTaer) January 8, 2023
In a hand-delivered letter on the airport tarmac, Abbott demanded that Biden take five immediate actions to end the crisis.
After landing in El Paso, Texas, Abbott criticized the visit for being “scripted” for political purposes and Biden’s failure to see the full scope of the problem he created.
Under Trump, Americans saw the lowest rate of illegal immigration in over 40 years.
Under Biden, we have seen the highest rate of illegal immigration over 60 years.
Biden ended Trump’s “remain in Mexico” policy, which forced foreign nationals seeking to enter the U.S. through the southern border — illegally or without proper documentation — to be returned to Mexico. These individuals needed to wait in Mexico while their legal cases are adjudicated.
Biden, on the other hand, opened the floodgates by removing this policy and thereby signaling that illegal immigrant may cross through the border even if it’s illegally and without proper documentation. This border security program under Trump and kept migrants in Mexico as they awaited their hearings.
Abbott wrote to Biden, “Your visit avoids the sites where mass illegal immigration occurs and sidesteps the thousands of angry Texas property owners whose lives have been destroyed by your border policies.”
“Even the city you visit has been sanitized of the migrant camps which had overrun downtown El Paso because your Administration wants to shield you from the chaos that Texans experience on a daily basis. This chaos is the direct result of your failure to enforce the immigration laws that Congress enacted,” Abbott wrote.
“Under President Trump, the federal government achieved historically low levels of illegal immigration,” he continued.
‘Under your watch, by contrast, America is suffering the worst illegal immigration in the history of our country. Your open-border policies have emboldened the cartels, who grow wealthy by trafficking deadly fentanyl and even human beings.”
“Texans are paying an especially high price for your failure, sometimes with their very lives, as local leaders from your own party will tell you if given the chance,” Abbott said.
“All of this is happening because you have violated your constitutional obligation to defend the States against invasion through faithful execution of federal laws. Halfway through your presidency, though, I can finally welcome you to the border. When you finish the photo-ops in a carefully stage-managed version of El Paso, you have a job to do,” the letter added.
“You must comply with the many statutes mandating that various categories of aliens ‘shall’ be detained, and end the practice of unlawfully paroling aliens en masse,” Abbott said.
“You must stop sandbagging the implementation of the Remain-in-Mexico policy and Title 42 expulsions, and fully enforce those measures as the federal courts have ordered you to do.”
“You must aggressively prosecute illegal entry between ports of entry, and allow ICE to remove illegal immigrants in accordance with existing federal laws,” Abbott continued. “You must immediately resume construction of the border wall in the State of Texas, using the billions of dollars Congress has appropriated for that purpose.”
“You must designate the Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations” and “secure our border by enforcing Congress’s immigration laws.”
