Chris Lange, FISM News
Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) will host 12 state attorneys general at a South Texas “border security briefing” Thursday at the Texas Department of Public Safety headquarters in Weslaco.
The group will spend two days touring the region and meeting with officials in border cities “to address the ill-conceived immigration policies of the Biden administration,” according to a tweet from Paxton. The attorneys general will also visit the state-funded border wall currently under construction at the Rio Grande.
“Ill-conceived immigration policies created by the Biden Administration have wreaked havoc on our communities and placed a massive burden on our country,” Paxton said in a statement.
“I want to thank our local, state and federal law enforcement officials and my fellow attorneys general, who attended the summit, for making this issue one of their top priorities. This affects them too,” he continued, adding, “Every state in the country is a border state. I will not allow this looming crisis on the border to continue to bring violence, drug cartels, and human trafficking to our communities.”
Ahead of the summit, Paxton issued a six-page border crisis update listing various court rulings and national immigration policies to offer guidance to local law enforcement, border property owners, and “concerned Texans” on the front lines of the nation’s border crisis.
Earlier this month, Gov. Abbott renewed his Border Security Disaster Declaration, certifying “that conditions continue to exist and pose an ongoing and imminent threat of disaster.”
FISM reported this week on shocking video footage showing ICE buses dropping off large numbers of single, adult male illegal immigrants at a parking garage in Brownville, Texas. The men were purportedly being loaded into taxis and taken to a nearby airport for transport to cities throughout the U.S.
Coinciding with the border summit is a “We Stand for America” rally scheduled to take place in McAllen, Texas over the weekend in support of “Border Law Enforcement and the direct connection to Election Integrity from a Biblical worldview.” The event is being hosted by several conservative organizations including Women Fighting for America, Veterans for America First, and Latinos for Trump, among others, according to the group’s website.
Migrant encounters in the U.S. topped 2 million in 2021 and are on pace to meet or exceed those numbers in 2022, according to a Monday Border Report press release. Abbott has continually criticized Biden for his lax immigration policies and perceived apathy towards the southern border, saying he is directly to blame for the immigration crisis.
Both Paxton and Abbott are up for reelection in November. Among Abbott’s challengers is failed 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, whose official website does not include a reference to the border crisis.