Abbott touts Texas border initiatives at Republican National Convention. Here's what he said

Gov. Greg Abbott brought a familiar script with him to his prime-time address to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Wednesday night, hammering Democratic President Joe Biden's border and immigration policies and touting the Lone Star State's response to the surge in migrants at the Texas-Mexico border.

"Joe Biden deserted his duty on his first day in office," Abbott told the cheering delegates, many of whom waved mass-produced bright blue placards reading, "Mass Deportation Now!"

"He gutted President (Donald) Trump's policies, and the result has been catastrophic. Under Joe Biden, illegal immigration has skyrocketed," the governor said.

Abbott affirmed to the convention that Trump, if elected, would "send them back," referring to undocumented immigrants.

After Biden ousted Trump from the White House after the 2020 election, Abbott swiftly assumed the mantle of the nation's loudest voice for beefed-up border security. And the three-term Republican governor of the U.S. state with largest border with Mexico made sure the GOP delegates inside Milwaukee's Fiserv Forum knew it.

He boasted about deploying thousands of National Guard soldiers to South Texas and about installing countless miles of coiled razor wire along the shores of the Rio Grande. He contrasted Biden's rollback of Trump's hard-line immigration policies with the ones of the former president and with the ones that Abbott instituted as governor.

"When Joe Biden and (Vice President) Kamala Harris refused to even come to Texas to see the border crisis that they created, I took the border to them." Abbott said as delegates cheered. "I began busing illegal immigrants to Washington, D.C. And we have continued busing migrants to sanctuary cities across the entire country. And those buses will continue to roll until we finally secure our border."

More: At Republican convention, Ted Cruz hails Trump, focuses ire at Biden's border policies

While Abbott in his seven-minute address made sure to lavish praise on Trump, who was scheduled Thursday night to accept his third straight nomination as the Republican candidate for president, the rapid-response team of Democrats in Texas accused the 66-year-old governor of wanting that nomination in 2028.

"The governor’s presidential ambitions will amplify his taxpayer funded political stunts and extreme vision for Texas while simultaneously continuing to leave our communities behind," Texas Democratic Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa said in an emailed statement to reporters, a thinly veiled dig at Abbott's absence from Texas when Hurricane Beryl crashed ashore the state's Gulf Coast. "Texas is strong because we stand together in times of crisis."

Abbott has been a Trump stalwart dating back to the former president's first campaign in 2016. This cycle Abbott gave Trump his endorsement in November 2023, and in February the governor and the former president joined forces in Eagle Pass where Abbott had amassed a militarized encampment in that border city as part of his $11 billion Operation Lone Star initiative.

It was a split-screen moment designed as a counterweight to Biden's visit to Brownsville, near where the Rio Grande meets the Gulf of Mexico.

Abbott was one of three Republican elected officials from Texas who were awarded a speaking slot on the third day of the four-day convention.

U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson, Trump's former White House physician who now represents part of the Texas Panhandle, aimed much of his criticism of the Democratic administration at the feet of Harris.

“She has not been truthful with us,” Jackson said of the current vice president. “She has lied to us. She has put party above country, and she is as unfit in character as Joe Biden is in body and mind.”

U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz, who won her seat in 2022 in the once-Democratic stronghold of the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas, told delegates that the immigration crisis at the southern border has done harm to the people in her heavily Hispanic part of the state.

"They say their immigration policies are compassionate," De La Cruz said of Democrats. "But there's nothing compassionate about open borders. They threaten our national security, flood our country with deadly drugs, killing our precious children, Biden and Harris don't care about it."

USA TODAY reporter Jonathan Limehouse contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Abbott touts Texas border initiatives at Republican National Convention. Here's what he said