Texas Governor Greg Abbott deployed the state’s National Guard troops and state law enforcement on Saturday to help fight what he called a “crisis” at the southern U.S. border, and condemned President Joe Biden’s administration for “escalating” the crisis.
“The crisis at our southern border continues to escalate because of Biden Administration policies that refuse to secure the border and invite illegal immigration,” Abbott’s statement read, as KFOX14 reported. “Texas supports legal immigration but will not be an accomplice to the open border policies that cause, rather than prevent, a humanitarian crisis in our state and endanger the lives of Texans. We will surge the resources and law enforcement personnel needed to confront this crisis.”
Operation Lone Star is being executed through a partnership between the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas National Guard to combat drug smuggling and human trafficking into Texas.
The operation will implement air, ground, marine and tactical border security measures to prevent Mexican cartels and others from smuggling drugs and people across the southern border, problems Abbott said have been made worse by the Biden administration.
“Today Texas launched Operation Lone Star to respond to the border crisis,” Abbott tweeted over the weekend. “It deploys Nat’l Guard + DPS Officers + air, ground, marine, & tactical border security assets to deny Mexican Cartels & smugglers the ability to move drugs & people into Texas.”
Biden’s administration has denied that a crisis exists on the border between the U.S. and Mexico, with the president himself refusing to characterize the overwhelming number of migrants at the border as such.
Last week, a reporter asked Biden if there was a crisis at the border, to which he responded, “No, we’ll be able to handle it.”
Biden also told reporters he learned “a lot” after receiving a briefing about the border.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas also denied the existence of a border crisis, instead identifying the situation as a “challenge.”
“The men and women of the Department of Homeland Security are working around the clock seven days a week to ensure that we do not have a crisis at the border — that we manage the challenge, as acute as the challenge is,” Mayorkas said.
Also last week, a large group of migrants were seen at the U.S.-Mexico border south of California wearing T-shirts that featured President Joe Biden’s campaign logo along with the words, “PLEASE LET US IN!”
During their demonstration, the group of migrants took a knee while urging the president to continue easing immigration policies and allow more immigrants to enter the United States.
