Texas Gov. Greg Abbott resists conservatives’ pleas to declare border ‘invasion’

Gov. Greg Abbott is resisting staunch conservatives’ pleas that he declare a migrant “invasion” is under way at the nation’s southern border. Also Wednesday, Abbott disclosed that Texas has donated spools of razor wire to Coahuila, a Mexican border state. For weeks, to deter unauthorized migrants, Texas has been deploying concertina wire on its side of the Rio Grande River. Appearing on “The Valley’s Morning News” on Edinburg’s KURV-AM, Abbott offered his most detailed explanation yet of why he hasn’t invoked war powers by officially declaring an “invasion” and letting state police arrest and deport undocumented immigrants. “I’m not afraid of a court fight” with the administration of President Joe Biden, the Republican governor insisted. However, “if you read every study” of plans for states to argue conditions on the border qualify as an invasion, “which I have, there is one thing that’s clear,” he told conservative talk-show host Sergio Sanchez. “It’s one thing to try to implement it and there’s two problems with regard to the implementation.” First, Texas Department of Public Safety officers might get prosecuted by federal officials, Abbott warned.

“If I make that declaration and tell law enforcement to do it, and law enforcement does do this, they are subject to potential criminal penalties imposed by Merrick Garland, the United States attorney general and the Biden administration, that would be more than happy to arrest and to prosecute a Texas law enforcement official,” he said. “And so we’re looking forward to greater answers about that before we pull that trigger.” Also, while state police might drive undocumented immigrants back across the Rio Grande, the migrants simply would “go a mile up the river and cross the border there,” he said. “And so it creates a revolving door.” Abbott, who is seeking a third term in November, has aggressively challenged Biden’s immigration policies over the past 15 months – even committing Texas to building its own border wall and deploying police and National Guard soldiers to make trespassing arrests of migrants. But the governor’s “Operation Lone Star,” though it’s on track to spend more than $5 billion of state discretionary funds in the current two-year budget cycle, has drawn little respect from immigration hard-liners.