Texas Governor Greg Abbott talks border security, bussing of immigrants to other cities
HOUSTON - Governor, I want to turn to an issue that is first and foremost in your mind, which is protecting our exposed, porous border. Operation Lone Star, busing migrants to northern cities, deploying the National Guard, you have done it all. You have brought a lot of exposure to the national consciousness to the crisis. Do you think the tide is turning?
Governor Greg Abbott:
Well, listen, the results are tangible. Remember ground zero for crossings in Texas was in Eagle Pass. There would be 3000, 4000, 5000 people crossing there a day and Eagle Pass, in the area where there is a 50-acre park, I told the National Guard I want you to seize that park, shut it down, do not let people pass. Ever since then, this area, where thousands of people once crossed, there are not thousands or hundreds or dozens, there are on average about five people a day or fewer crossing there and those people are arrested by the Texas Department of Public Safety. Texas which represents two thirds of the entire border with Mexico, used to have more than two thirds of the illegal crossings. Now about three fourths of the illegal crossings are in California, Arizona and New Mexico, not the state of Texas. So, we are having a profound impact on stopping the flow of immigration into the state of Texas.
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Groogan:
Governor, recently impeached Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas went to Guatemala and was kind of trash talking SB-4 which you signed into law. Any reaction to that?
Abbott:
So, what Mayorkas has said is nothing but a bunch of lies. He has been impeached, in part, because he lied to Congress by telling Congress and America that the Border was secure. The Biden Administration has not secured the Border. What SB-4 does is allows Texas to assert the powers that Congress has given the Federal government. Let me be clear about this, Congress has passed three laws - one that requires the President to deter anyone who is trying to enter the country illegally and then to detain anybody who does enter illegally and to build border barriers. Biden is doing none of those three things. Texas is trying to step up and enforce by state law the same law that Congress passed, which is to deny illegal entry, detain people who get here and build those border walls.
Groogan:
Governor, I would like you to go back to that moment when you decided to start busing many of these illegal immigrants to cities like New York and Chicago and others. Now, you have almost an ally in Mayor Adams who has gone to the White House and said we have to do something on the border. Tell me how you feel about that decision.
Abbott:
For one it has completely changed the political dynamics and discourse across the United States of America because now it's not just Republicans, but it's Democrats also who say, listen this open border is a crisis the Biden administration is putting the country in. Going back to the beginning of the decision, I was sitting around with a bunch of local mayors and county leaders and police chiefs and Sheriffs and they are small, little communities like Del Rio and Eagle Pass and they were having hundreds of people dropped off by the Biden Administration and they could not deal with it. I said, I'll take care of it and I began the busing process and the thought was this if Joe Biden and his Border Czar Kamala Harris were not going to come to border, I was going to take border to them, which originally was Washington D.C. and then expanded to sanctuary cities, cities that have self-identified they want these people to come to their cities. They did want them until they actually showed up and then they could not deal with it.