Texas Gov. Greg Abbott vowed over the weekend to hire U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents if President Joe Biden’s administration fires them following debunked and subsequently corrected reports of agents whipping Haitian illegal immigrants at the southern border.
During an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” with host Chris Wallace, Abbot accused Biden of causing the chaos at the border.
“First, they wouldn’t have been in that situation had the Biden administration enforced the immigration laws and secured the border in the first place,” Abbott said. “Second, as you know, Chris, 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, coming across the border is false. They were simply maneuvering horses.”
“But the last thing I will tell you is what the President said going after the Border Patrol — who were risking their lives and working so hard to try to secure the border — if he takes any action against them whatsoever, I have worked side by side with those Border Patrol agents,” the governor continued. “I want them to know something, if they are at risk of losing their job, got a president who is abandoning his duty to secure the border, you have a job in the state of Texas. I will hire you to help Texas secure our border.”
Earlier in the interview, Abbott told Wallace that both President Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas were “in dereliction of duty” having “abandoned any pretense of securing the sovereignty of either Texas or the United States by having these open border policies.”
Abbott said the flow of thousands of illegal immigrants last week only stopped after he ordered hundreds of state law enforcement to the border.
“That’s exactly what the Biden administration could do if they wanted to,” he continued. “But Chris, it’s the kind of thing that Texas is going to have to continue to do in addition to the other policies that you did not announce and that is, as opposed to catch and release, Texas has imposed a policy where we are going to arrest and jail people who come in across the border for trespassing into areas into the state of Texas.”
Abbott concurred that Texas has effectively been forced to take over immigration at the southern border “because the Biden administration is refusing to do its duty to enforce the laws of the United States.“
