Abbott’s RNC remarks amplify his attack on Biden’s border policies

AUSTIN (Texas Tribune) — Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday sharply attacked President Joe Biden over immigration, telling Republican National Convention delegates that the current administration has abdicated its duty to secure the country before falsely crediting former President Donald Trump with “eliminating illegal immigration.”

“Biden deserted his duty on his first day in office,” Abbott told thousands of delegates gathered in Milwaukee. “He gutted President Trump's policies, and the result has been catastrophic.”

Abbott also vowed to continue sending migrants to so-called “sanctuary cities” in northern states such as New York or Illinois, a policy that has cost Texas taxpayers at least $148 million since it was announced in 2022.

“When Joe Biden and Kamala Harris refused to even come to Texas to see the border crisis, I took the border to them,” he said. “...We have continued busing migrants to sanctuary cities all across the country. Those buses will continue to roll until we finally secure our border.”

Abbott also reiterated his support for Trump. “He will enforce the immigration laws,” Abbott said. “He will fight the Mexican drug cartels. And he will arrest the criminal illegal immigrants and put them behind bars or send them back.”

Abbott’s appearance capped off a series of speeches that heavily focused on immigration, and painted migrants as criminals who have “invaded” across the US-Mexico border. It came amid ongoing fallout from Hurricane Beryl, which left tens of thousands of southeast Texans without power for days. Since the storm made landfall earlier this month, Abbott has faced some criticism for being in Asia for an economic development trip — a decision he has defended. He missed the first two days of the convention, which began Monday, to deal with fallout from the storm.

Abbott’s speech came days after U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced that the number of migrants apprehended by federal authorities had dropped by 32% in June — among the first numbers released since Biden’s executive order that widely stopped granting asylum to migrants, which went into effect June 5.

Biden’s order was in response to apprehensions in Texas that peaked in March at 54,172, but had dropped in the following months. Across the Southern border, apprehensions peaked this year in February at 140,628 — a significant drop from the record-high 249,785 apprehensions recorded by Border Patrol in December.

In his speech, Abbott also touted his decision to order thousands of Texas Department of Public Safety and National Guard troops to the border as part of Operation Lone Star, a program he launched in March 2021 — two months after Biden took office — to combat what he decried as insufficient federal immigration enforcement. The mission has cost Texas taxpayers $11 billion so far.

In three and a half years, the state has strung rows of concertina wire along the banks of the Rio Grande, used shipping containers to make improvised walls, and broken ground on an 80-acre military base in Eagle Pass that will house up to 2,300 troops.

While the operation has been accompanied by a lack of clear progress measures or accountability, Abbott has credited Operation Lone Star with a recent decrease in the number of illegal crossings through Texas. But foreign policy analysts say migration patterns are complicated and not easily explained by any one variable — for example, they point to record illegal crossings along the Texas-Mexico border during the operation’s first three years, before this spring’s migration shift to California and Arizona.

Delegates were decidedly less nuanced on Wednesday, instead chanting “send them back!” as Abbott spoke.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at www.texastribune.org. The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans - and engages with them - about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.