Tex gov: I’ll hire agents
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the Lone Star State will hire any Border Patrol agents who fear being fired by the Biden administration.
“You have a job in the state of Texas. I will hire you to help Texas secure our border,” the Republican said on “Fox News Sunday.”
President Biden has said agents “will pay” for their treatment of Haitians at the border, amid false claims that officers used their horses’ reins as whips.
Abbott believes the administration put the Border Patrol agents in a difficult situation because it failed to enforce immigration laws and secure the border.
“The person who took those pictures said that the characterization that the Democrats have made about the Border Patrol using them as whips, whipping people who were coming across the border is false. They were simply maneuvering horses,” Abbott said.
He added that if the agents are at risk of losing their jobs because of a “president who is abandoning his duty to secure the border, [they] have a job in Texas.”
Images released last week showed mounted Border Patrol agents guiding their horses to prevent Haitian migrants from joining a growing encampment in Del Rio, Texas, and Democrats seized on the photos to accuse the agents of using the reins like whips.
The Agence FrancePresse photographer, Paul Ratije, acknowledged that the agents were “swinging” the reins, but said, “It can be misconstrued when you’re looking at the picture.”
“I didn’t ever see them whip anybody,” he said.
Abbott said the administration’s inability to control the border forces him to act.
“I am going to step up and do whatever I have to do to make sure that I protect the people of Del Rio, as well as all these other communities in the state of Texas that the Biden administration is ignoring,” he said.