Gov. Greg Abbott, R-Texas, on Tuesday directed hundreds of Texas Department of Public Safety vehicles to form a barrier to stop thousands of illegal immigrants from pouring across the border.
Abbott is taking matters into his own hands amid the ongoing migrant crisis that suddenly worsened when thousands of Haitians unexpectedly surged the border and began residing in makeshift camps under the international bridge between Del Rio, Texas, and Ciudad Acuña, Mexico.
Pointing to the Biden administration’s dismissive and unsupportive behavior to the state’s efforts to control the border, Abbott stated, “We’re doing Biden’s job for him.”
Abbott later confirmed that the state successfully regained control of the border thanks to the initiatives of the Texas Department of Public Safety in setting up a “steel wall” of “hundreds” of government vehicles across the largest sector of the Del Rio border.
“We effectively, as the officer said, regained control of the border in the Rio Grande sector, because the TDPS stepped up,” the governor stated. “If Biden followed that court order, we would not see the chaos that we are seeing in Del Rio today.”
“One day there were countless people coming across the border, then the very same day the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) put up all these DPS vehicles, and suddenly, in an instant, people stopped crossing the border in this location. That strategy is working,” Abbott told Fox News.
Th Texas governor said the migrant crisis and the steps taken to keep control of the southern border are “unprecedented” measures as the Biden administration continues to encourage a messy plan that involves “open border policies.”
“The only thing they’ve shown is an incapability of dealing with this crisis, candidly in a way where they pretend it doesn’t even exist,” the governor added at the Del Rio press conference. “And we’re here to tell you, it exists and it’s total chaos and the Biden administration- they need to up their game, big time.”
Amid record-high levels of illegal immigration due to Central American migrants who have flooded the border for months, an additional 15,000 migrants, a majority of them Haitians, began pouring in last week through open sections of the southern border. The Department of Homeland Security has gone back and forth on how to address the humanitarian crisis.
It appears there is a lack of communication because not everyone is on the same page. DHS Secretary Mayorkas announced at a press conference earlier this week that they would be accelerating flights for Haitian migrants either back to Haiti or other places of origin, including other countries in South America.
While DHS argues many would be deported under CDC’s Title 42 provision, and that Temporary Protected Status (TPS) only applies to Haitians residing in the U.S. on or before July 29, the Biden administration is hard at work to continue reversing Trump-era border policies that kept the southern border under control for most of his tenure. The current administration has been relocating migrants, a majority of them unvetted, to other cities within the United States with no means to account for them once they are “released.”