By Texas Governor Greg Abbott
Last week, I formally invited the mayors of New York City and Washington, D.C. to Texas’ southern border to see firsthand the situation that Washington’s Mayor Muriel Bowser recently described as a humanitarian crisis. She has emphasized that the flow of migrants into her city is a “federal issue that demands a federal response.” Finally, something reasonable from a D.C. official.
President Joe Biden’s irresponsible open border policies have invited record-high numbers of illegal immigrants and transnational criminal activity directly into communities, not only in Texas but across the nation.
As governor of a southern border state, I have had to deploy unprecedented amounts of state resources–including more than $3 billion over the past 18 months–to the Texas National Guard, Texas Department of Public Safety, and local partners to help address the president’s national security failure and ensure the safety of Texans.
In response to the Biden administration’s unconscionable disregard for the southern border, I launched Operation Lone Star in March 2021 in partnership with these state agencies to protect Texans in communities. Thousands of deployed troopers and guardsmen are utilizing air, ground, and tactical border assets to combat Mexican drug cartels and other criminals who smuggle drugs and people into the U.S.
As of late July, the mission has led to more than 290,000 migrant apprehensions and the seizure of nearly 326 million lethal doses of fentanyl–enough to kill almost every American. With Texas bearing the brunt of the president’s catastrophic failure, in April I directed the Texas Division of Emergency Management to begin busing migrants to Washington, D.C. to provide relief to overrun border communities and bring the reality of the crisis to the federal government’s doorstep.
It was not long before Mayor Bowser began decrying the mission after receiving only a fraction of what Texas law enforcement encounter each day along the border. Mayor Bowser went so far as to request indefinite federal assistance from the National Guard to help D.C. cope with the humanitarian crisis.
Continue reading over at Fox News:
OPINION: NYC, DC mayors now see our border crisis is real. They should call on Biden to step up https://t.co/9UuuK8YRoN
— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 11, 2022