GOP Governor Greg Abbott on Thursday ordered the Texas National Guard and state police to begin detaining immigrants illegally crossing the border from Mexico and returning them to ports of entry. , a move that can put the state in direct conflict with federal government policies.
In a statement, Abbott said the goal was to return “illegal immigrants to the border to prevent this criminal enterprise from putting our communities at risk.”
The order, which significantly expanded the potential activity of National Guard troops and state police along the border, came amid mounting pressure from conservatives and Republicans for Abbott to take more drastic action on record numbers of immigrants arriving from Mexico.
Federal agents recorded 240,000 crossings in May, the majority in Texas, although recently the daily numbers have declined slightly, one official said, citing internal data.
This week, Texas officials in counties on and near the border urged the governor to act, and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick urged Abbott to order state troopers to “get their hands on people and send them back,” comparing the number. of migrants arriving from Mexico to the attack on Pearl Harbor in World War II.
Republican politicians in other states also pressured Abbott. “Texas should just get them back across the border,” said Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida.
Immigration has historically been the province of the federal government, and states have refrained from trying to enforce federal laws, particularly after a Supreme Court ruling a decade ago overturned an Arizona attempt to do so.
Abbott has so far failed to heed what many of his conservative critics have called for: a formal “invasion” declaration, which, proponents argue, would allow the governor to assume wartime powers, causing state police to not just drive migrants back. to the border, but deport them directly.
Indeed, the first criticism of his order came not from immigration advocates or civil rights groups, but from a former Trump administration Department of Homeland Security official, Ken Cuccinelli, who hinted that the governor’s order was not it was effective enough. Cuccinelli has been actively asking Abbott to make the trespass declaration.
“The governor does not appear to formally declare an invasion or direct the National Guard and Department of Public Safety to evacuate illegals across the border directly into Mexico,” read a joint statement from Cuccinelli and Russ Vought, president of the Center for America’s Renewal. , a non-profit conservative group. “This is critical. Otherwise, just catch and release.”
Raices, a Texas nonprofit that provides legal services to migrants, said in a statement that the order was a “disgusting political coup” and “illegal” and urged the Justice Department to “intervene immediately.”
Although Abbott has already sent thousands of National Guard members to the border, the troops have primarily acted as vigilantes, calling in federal Border Patrol agents when they spot immigrants illegally entering the United States.
In his order on Thursday, Abbott appeared ready to test the limits of immigration enforcement law, declaring that the Supreme Court, in a 2012 case, had not specifically addressed whether a state could detain someone on suspicion of an immigration crime or whether federal law would prevent it.
“This is setting up a test case,” said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. The Supreme Court rejected a similar attempt by Arizona in 2012 to prioritize the enforcement of illegal immigration, he said.
“But this is a different Supreme Court,” he added. “If you’re from Texas, you might think, ‘This is a good opportunity to see if there’s still a majority for this precedent.’
The governor’s order took effect immediately, but officials said the practical details of how it will be implemented are still being worked out. It is likely to complicate relations between state and federal police, who routinely work together along the border.
The White House cast doubt on the governor’s order by criticizing his immigration record. “Their so-called Operation Lone Star put national guards and police in dangerous situations and resulted in a logistical nightmare that required federal assistance,” said spokesman Abdullah Hasan.
Several questions remain about how the order would be carried out in practice. It was not clear, for example, how far from the border the migrants would be apprehended, how they would be identified and what would happen to them when they were deposited at ports of entry, which are on several bridges between Mexico and Texas.
It was also unclear how the order would fit into Abbott’s current efforts to deal with the influx of migrants to Texas, one of which calls for law enforcement officials to charge immigrants found on private farms with trespass. This was not expected to affect a state program in which migrants already registered with the Border Patrol earn trips to Washington or elsewhere on state-chartered buses.
Kate Huddleston, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Texas, said the order would encourage state law enforcement officers to “racially identify blacks and Latinos,” which “recklessly fan the flames of hatred in our state.” “.
But anger among conservatives has grown, particularly among those in communities close to the border. On Tuesday (5), several municipal leaders held a press conference and declared among themselves that the wave of migrants constituted an invasion.
“We’re here to change that,” said one of the leaders, Tully Shahan, the mayor of Kinney County. “We don’t want to lose the US. The Biden administration can stop this thing now. They can stop this now.”
Mike Bennett, the mayor of Goliad County, addressed Abbott directly, saying, “I urge the governor to speak up today and deal with these people at the border.”
In response to the Texas governor’s measures, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador told a news conference on Friday that he would encourage Americans of Mexican origin not to vote for “anti-immigration” candidates.
He also described the decision as immoral and said it was a political maneuver by Abbott for the November elections, in which he will run for re-election. “If the candidate is from a party that mistreats immigrants and Mexicans, then I will ask my countrymen not to vote for that candidate or party.”
AMLO, as the Mexican president is known, is due to travel to the United States next Tuesday to meet with Biden. He says he is “absolutely certain” that the US president does not approve of the Texas government’s immigration policy.
