Immigration system takeover must be stopped

Greg Abbott told us everything we needed to know about him back in 2014. He told us everything by saying nothing.

In the summer of 2014, Texas was experiencing a surge of unaccompanied Central American kids at the U.S.-Mexico border.

In a move he called Operation Strong Safety, then-Gov. Rick Perry deployed 1,000 National Guard troops to the border. Perry said their mission was to “deter and refer”: deter unauthorized border crossings with their mere presence and refer information about such crossings to Border Patrol agents.

At the same time Perry deployed those troops, a loosely aligned coalition of armed, vigilante militia groups (including Oathkeepers and Three Percenter’s Club) headed for the border.

With these militias taking it upon themselves to supplement Border Patrol agents, National Guard troops and local law enforcement officials, the situation felt chaotic and dangerous.

Frustrated over the militia presence on the border, a dozen Texas congressional Democrats wrote a letter to Abbott, who was then the state’s attorney general as well as the 2014 Republican Party nominee for governor.

The letter asked Abbott to “clarify the jurisdiction these militia groups have to patrol alongside local law enforcement and Border Patrol agents.”

The congressional Democrats said they were “deeply disturbed” by images of “armed and masked militia groups purportedly patrolling our Texas border in response to the arrival of unaccompanied children from Central America to our state.”

Abbott brushed off the letter. He refused to say one negative word about the militias taking the law into their own hands. His spokeswoman, Lauren Bean, called the letter a “partisan political stunt.”

It could have been that Abbott lacked the moral compass to see a problem with militia marauders patrolling the borders. Just as easily, however, it could have been that Abbott was so lacking in political courage that he couldn’t bring himself to alienate right-wing extremists by telling them to stand down.

That’s the way it generally goes with Abbott. In the Venn diagram of his public life, moral bankruptcy overlaps with political cowardice to the point where they become indistinguishable.

The tougher Abbott talks, the more fearful he is. With two Republican primary challengers — Don Huffines and Allen West — making the case that the governor is not sufficiently hawkish when it comes to border policy, Abbott is employing tactics that carry some of the stench of that 2014 militia uprising.

Abbott’s Operation Lone Star program has employed Department of Public Safety troopers and Texas National Guard soldiers to arrest migrants at the border for criminal trespassing.

It’s a bid for a state takeover of our federal immigration system, motivated by a desire to embarrass Democratic President Joe Biden.

As Jasper Scherer reported earlier this month for Hearst Newspapers, these trespassing arrests have overloaded the court systems of small Texas counties and resulted in migrants being stuck in jail for weeks without being charged or provided a chance for legal representation.

Abbott’s border tactics have prompted 26 U.S. House Democrats, including San Antonio Congressman Joaquin Castro, to send a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

The Oct. 29 letter said Operation Lone Star is “wreaking havoc on Texas’ judicial system” and militarizing the state’s border communities. It asked for federal guidance on the legality of Abbott’s program.

When Perry deployed National Guard troops to the border, it was a highly controversial move. But at least Perry declined to give those troops the power to make arrests at the border.

Say this, however, for Abbott’s brass-knuckles approach: It has swayed one of his most prominent conservative detractors, Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Abbott appeared on Carlson’s show this past week and received gratitude from the host for Operation Lone Star.

Abbott said Biden seeks open borders because he and his administration “are truly trying to redesign the United States of America in a lawless way.”

Contrary to these open-borders claims, Biden has essentially shut down this country’s asylum process by continuing his Republican predecessor Donald Trump’s use of a federal publichealth law (Title 42) to deny asylum seekers a chance to enter the country. Biden’s one stated exception has been for unaccompanied minors.

Over the past four months, federal officials have recorded an average of more than 200,000 border-enforcement encounters per month.

If, as Abbott and others claim, Biden’s policy is simply to send home the Border Patrol and let undocumented immigrants saunter into the United States whenever they choose, how do you explain all those border-enforcement encounters?

Abbott doesn’t have to explain anything. He just has to keep pandering.