Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott issued a disaster declaration Tuesday in the face of an overwhelming influx of illegal immigration since President Joe Biden took office.
“Landowners along the border are seeing their property damaged and vandalized on a daily basis while the Biden Administration does nothing to protect them,” Abbott said in a press release. “Texas continues to step up to confront the border crisis in the federal government’s absence.”
New: @GovAbbott has issued a disaster declaration in Texas’ southern border counties in response to illegal immigration. #txlege
Order text, here: https://t.co/X4cpZEdLtW pic.twitter.com/i1OS01BYd6
— Brad Johnson (@bradj_TX) June 1, 2021
The governor said Tuesday’s disaster declaration will now open state access to resources and strategies to handle the spike in immigration that is also bringing spikes in other crimes.
In one south Texas community, profiled by Federalist Political Editor John Davidson, residents say the immigration issue is the worst it’s ever been, featuring car chases, broken fences, vandalized property, and corpses recovered by law enforcement. While corporate coverage focuses almost exclusively on families and children making the dangerous trip in the name of the American dream, more than 70 percent of illegal U.S. entrants since October have been single adults.
“Brooks County Sheriff Benny Martinez says this year is already far worse than 2019 and reminds him more of 2012, when his deputies recovered a record 129 bodies and Texas became the deadliest state in the country for illegal immigrants,” Davidson wrote.
Smugglers traveling in smaller groups have become more sophisticated at using GPS to drive cross-country and ram through fences in a vast landscape patrolled with limited resources at law enforcement’s disposal.
According to the press release announcing the disaster declaration, Abbott “is authorizing the use of all necessary and available state and local resources to protect landowners” from immigrant vandalism. The governor also ordered the Texas Department of Public Safety to crack down on criminal trespassing, smuggling, and human trafficking while enforcing all federal and state laws to confront the crisis engineered by President Biden since even before the new administration took over.
Massive caravans began to form soon after the November election was called for the incoming Democrat president, taking their cue from the nominee’s soft rhetoric in immigration to signal a return to the open border policies of the Obama administration. Since taking office, Biden has held true to his promise to be an open border president, halting construction of the southern border wall, attempting to end deportations, and reinstating Obama-era protections for illegal aliens.
The result brought the largest influx of illegal aliens in more than two decades, with more on the way, motivated by inept leadership in Washington deploying inadequate resources to confront the problem. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has confiscated more fentanyl in the first half of this year than in the last three years as controlled substances flow over the floodgates opened by the new president.
Abbott’s disaster declaration coincided with an endorsement from former President Donald Trump as the Texas governor prepares for a competitive re-election race next year for a third term.
“No governor has done more to secure the border and keep our communities safe than Governor Abbott,” Trump said in a Tuesday press release.
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) June 1, 2021
