() Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday sent a letter to New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser, inviting them to visit Texas’s southern border to see the humanitarian crisis firsthand.
While Adams and Bowser are concerned about receiving around 100 people a day being transported north from the southern border, Texas is receiving several thousand a day, Abbott said.
Local communities cannot sustain the record-high numbers of people illegally entering Texas from over 150 countries, enough fentanyl pouring in to kill everyone in the U.S., and record-breaking crime resulting from President Joe Biden’s “reckless open border policies [that] have invited mass migration and transnational criminal activity into Texas communities,” he said.
In a letter to the mayors sent Monday, he wrote, “Your recent interest in this historic and preventable crisis is a welcome development, especially as the President and his Administration have shown no remorse for their actions nor desire to address the situation themselves.
“I invite you to visit our border region to see firsthand the dire situation that only grows more urgent with each passing day, and to meet with the local officials, who like yourselves, realize this matter deserves immediate federal action. I also ask you to join me in requesting President Biden secure the border and put an end to this disastrous crisis.”
His invitation came after the mayors blamed him for the humanitarian crisis their cities are facing as a result of several thousand people who’ve entered the U.S. illegally being sent to New York City by the Biden administration and to Washington, D.C., by Abbott.
“As you know, our nation’s southern border has become both a humanitarian and security crisis,” he wrote.
“This crisis was created by President Biden and is one that requires immediate and decisive action to be stopped,” he continued. “As Governor of a southern border state, I have watched illegal crossings hit record highs over and over again since President Biden took office. In the absence of federal action, I have deployed unprecedented resources to prevent, deter, and interdict illegal immigration and transnational criminal activity that threatens our citizens. Texas has spent over $3 billion in the past 18 months to curtail the devastation felt by our communities large and small.”
While the mayors have publicly complained about strained resources, the Texas legislature allocated $4 billion to border security efforts and passed laws to make it easier to arrest and prosecute human and drug smugglers.
The state has arrested and jailed criminal trespassers and foreign nationals committing state crimes. Abbott has signed multiple bills into law penalizing human trafficking and those manufacturing and distributing fentanyl.
Texas also for the first time in U.S. history began building a border wall and is the only state to enter into agreements with the governors of four Mexican states to enhance border security measures.
Abbot has issued disaster declarations for counties inundated with crime stemming from Biden’s border policies, issued executive orders to thwart criminal activity and authorize the Texas National Guard and DPS to return foreign nationals and criminal aliens who’ve entered Texas illegally to the border. He’s also established strike teams to target semi-trucks and other commercial vehicles entering Texas from Mexico.
No mayor or governor has implemented the policies Abbot has in the last 18 months, policies he argues he shouldn’t have had to implement if Biden were doing his job and securing the border.
The mayors have not yet responded to his invitation, but White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters last week that the busing scheme was “shameful.”
“What Republicans are doing, the way that they’re meddling in the process and using migrants as a political pawn is just wrong,” she said.
Abbott sending people to “big cities” was “on purpose” and he was “using them as a political point. … there is a process in place, and we should follow the process. There’s a legal process in place, and they should follow it.”
But Abbott argues, “Unfortunately, President Biden and his ‘Border Czar’ Vice President [Kamala] Harris have refused to see this crisis for themselves – remaining willfully ignorant of the crisis that they have created.”
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas recently claimed the southern border was “safe and secure,” which Abbott says is false; it’s “neither safe nor secure, as you can both attest to.”
“As law enforcement agents along the Texas-Mexico border respond to thousands of illegal crossings each and every day, putting their lives on the line for Texans and for all Americans, the crisis demands the attention of not only the Biden Administration, which is responsible for securing the border, but of leaders across the country,” he argues.
