Texas legislators step into wall debate

AUSTIN — Grisly beheadings would be happening now in El Paso if not for the city’s border fence, and as Congress balks at funding a border wall, GOP lawmakers this week said Texans should consider spending $2.5 billion in state money to build it.

The remarks came this week as President Donald Trump traveled to El Paso to make his case to build the wall, his signature campaign promise.

It wasn’t the first time state legislators hopped in to back up Trump on immigration issues, which the party’s voters consider the most important problem facing the state, according to a Texas Tribune/University of Texas poll conducted shortly before the November election.

Standing outside Trump’s “Finish The Wall” rally Monday night, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told a national television audience the border fence in El Paso isn’t just stopping crime, but preventing gruesome decapitations and hangings in the city.

Patrick, a Republican from Montgomery County who controls the Texas Senate, told Fox News host Laura Ingraham the border wall is preventing the kind of horrendous murders he says are going on in Juarez, the city across the Rio Grande.

“If this fence were not here, that violence — of decapitating people, of hanging people from bridges, of cutting off their heads and rolling them in pool halls and down the street — that violence would be here in El Paso,” Patrick said.

Last month, Patrick flew to Washington to consult with Trump’s senior adviser and sonin-law Jared Kushner to help prepare a prime time address on border security.

Later, Patrick joined Trump in McAllen for a discussion with border patrol officials. It was there that Trump said Patrick had offered Texas’ help on the wall.

Reps. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, and Kyle Biedermann, RFredericksburg, took that idea a step further, and plan to ask the Legislature to take money out of the state’s savings to help fund a border wall.

They told Breitbart, a conservative website, they plan to file legislation that would cover up to $2.5 billion to “design, test, construct, and install physical barriers, roads, and technology along the international land border between the state of Texas and Mexico to prevent illegal crossings in all areas.”

“If Congress refuses to keep Americans safe, then Texas will answer the call,” Cain said in a statement.

Cain’s staff emphasized Tuesday that the lawmakers have not settled on details of the bill, including the amount.