Gov. Abbott Has Made Immigration Central to His Re-Election Campaign

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, dealing with re-election for a 3rd time period in November, has positioned himself because the defender of the nation from migrants, making his aggressive stance on unauthorized migration central to his political marketing campaign, regardless that his insurance policies have been in the end unsuccessful in stemming the arrival of migrants.

Even although the federal authorities enforces immigration regulation, Mr. Abbott has poured billions into sending state police and the National Guard to the border, repurposed state prisons to maintain migrants charged with trespassing and set up check points for vehicles from Mexico, disrupting worldwide commerce.

His Democratic challenger, Beto O’Rourke, has criticized Mr. Abbott for staging “stunts” and failing to obtain any significant progress in his years as governor in resolving the scenario on the border.

Hours earlier than the invention of the migrant deaths, he boasted on Twitter of the variety of migrants apprehended and criminally charged beneath what he has dubbed “Operation Lone Star.”

Despite the arrests, extra migrants have been arriving on the border and managing to evade detection and enter the nation illegally. In March, federal brokers recorded almost 129,000 crossings into Texas, about 11,000 greater than the identical interval final yr, when Mr. Abbott started the operation.

After information of the deaths emerged, he pointed the blame at President Biden’s insurance policies.

“These deaths are on Biden. They are a result of his deadly open border policies,” he wrote on Twitter. “They show the deadly consequences of his refusal to enforce the law.”

Mr. Abbott’s method to fortifying Texas’ 1,254-mile border, setting up new fencing and threatening to declare an “invasion” to invoke struggle powers, helped him fend off main challengers additional to his proper and has made him an everyday on Fox News.

In April, he began paying for buses to ferry migrants from Texas to Washington, D.C. and drop them off on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

Federal officers have been anticipating that the lifting of a pandemic-related emergency public well being order, beneath which many migrants have been swiftly expelled, might carry 1000’s of migrants day by day to the southern border, which has already been seeing a surge of unlawful crossings.

The rule, Title 42, was set to be lifted in May, however a federal decide ordered that it stay in place. The Biden administration stated it will attraction. It has used the rule a couple of million instances to flip migrants away.

Judges have additionally blocked Mr. Biden from canceling a Trump-era coverage that requires many asylum seekers to remain in Mexico whereas their immigration circumstances are thought-about by U.S. courts.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting.