Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) said Texas has won its battle against illegal immigrants , but he worried the country needs a new president to stop them from slipping into other border states.
On Tuesday, the Republican governor said, “We’ve solved the Texas problem,” telling NewsNation that illegal border crossings are down “more than 85%” over the past year at the Texas-Mexico border.
Illegal immigration has declined at the Mexican border since breaking records in December 2023. Abbott said he deserves credit for the dwindling numbers, dismissing arguments that President Joe Biden’s executive order in June, which limited illegal entries at the U.S.-Mexico border, is responsible for the drop.
“If you go back and look at when border crossings began to decline, that was more than half a year before,” Abbott said. "That was back in last December, and that was after Texas had begun our accelerated operations to deny illegal entry using the guard, using the razor wire, using the pepper ball, and so it was the robust comprehensive approach by Texas that actually led to the decline.
“Biden just happened to come in and stepped and rode on our coattails,” he added.
Although he celebrated the drop, Abbott said he would not rest until illegal crossings are at “zero” at his state’s border. However, even if the Republican governor does reach his goal of “reducing illegal immigration 100%” into his state, he said he is still worried about “all those terrorists, all those murderers, all those rapists” slipping into the U.S. by going through New Mexico, Arizona, and California, the three other states that border Mexico.
"The United States problem — that requires a new president to make sure that we are actually going to secure our border," he said.
Border issues have been front and center in the 2024 presidential election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. Abbott has been a staunch supporter of Trump, recently speaking in fervent support of the GOP nominee at the Republican National Convention. Trump has vowed to carry out mass deportations if elected to a second term.
The Texas Republican has instituted a number of strict measures designed to combat illegal immigration in his state. At the end of July, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that the Republican governor’s measure to place buoy barriers in the Rio Grande to deter illegal immigrants was lawful.
The measure, part of the multibillion-dollar initiative “Operation Lone Star” that he launched in March 2021, is just one component Abbott credits for combatting illegal immigration.
The Texas governor unveiled another key ingredient to the border security strategy in April 2022, when he created a busing operation that transported illegal immigrants out of Texas and into other states with sanctuary city policies.
Abbott has overseen the transportation of roughly 119,000 illegal immigrants to sanctuary cities throughout the nation, according to a June 28 news release from the governor’s office.
“We have continued busing migrants to sanctuary cities all across the country,” Abbott proclaimed last month during a speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. “Those buses will continue to roll until we finally secure our border.”
But about four weeks after he made the remarks, Abbott told NewsNation that buses had not rolled out of Texas for almost two months.
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“The crossings have been down so much we haven’t actually had the volume of people to bus to other locations,” Abbott said Tuesday.
The program remains in place, and Abbott promised he would “start busing operations” again should another surge in illegal immigration take place. The Texas governor said is “fully expecting” to see another uptick in border crossings in his state during the coming months.
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