OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott was waiting for President Joe Biden at the airport when he landed near El Paso on Sunday for his first visit to the chaotic U.S.-Mexico border since he was inaugurated and immediately reversed most of former President Donald Trump’s immigration and border security policies.
As the two met on the tarmac, Abbott wasted no time taking advantage of the opportunity after attempting to get the president to change direction on policies and reimplement at least some of what Trump put in place after record numbers of migrants crossed illegally into the Lone Star state over the two years of Biden’s first term.
“Your visit to our southern border with Mexico today is $20 billion too little and two years too late,” the letter began. “Moreover, your visit avoids the sites where mass illegal immigration occurs and sidesteps the thousands of angry Texas property owners whose lives have been destroyed by your border policies.
“Even the city you visit has been sanitized of the migrant camps which had overrun downtown El Paso because your Administration wants to shield you from the chaos that Texans experience on a daily basis,” the letter continued. “This chaos is the direct result of your failure to enforce the immigration laws that Congress enacted.”
He went on to say that under the Trump administration, the border was much more secure.
“Your open-border policies have emboldened the cartels, who grow wealthy by trafficking deadly fentanyl and even human beings,” the letter said. “Texans are paying an especially high price for your failure, sometimes with their very lives, as local leaders from your own party will tell you if given the chance.”
Abbott said the crisis was the result of Biden violating his constitutional obligation “to defend the States against invasion through faithful execution of federal laws.”
The Texas governor also advised the president that when he finished “the photo-ops in a carefully stage-managed version of El Paso,” he needed to:
- You must comply with the many statutes mandating that various categories of aliens “shall” be detained, and end the practice of unlawfully paroling aliens en masse.
- You must stop sandbagging the implementation of the Remain-in-Mexico policy and Title 42 expulsions, and fully enforce those measures as the federal courts have ordered you to do.
- You must aggressively prosecute illegal entry between ports of entry, and allow ICE to remove illegal immigrants in accordance with existing federal laws.
- You must immediately resume construction of the border wall in the State of Texas, using the billions of dollars Congress has appropriated for that purpose.
- You must designate the Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
Abbott explained the genesis of his meeting with Biden and why he made sure to be at the airport when the president landed in an interview with the Daily Caller’s Jennie Taer:
I asked Gov Abbott why he decided to greet Biden in El Paso today. Here’s what he said: https://t.co/UTxLUHrTY9@DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/bhBePGPUDj
— Jennie Taer (@JennieSTaer) January 8, 2023
In June, Real America’s Voice podcaster Steve Bannon, former top adviser to then-President Trump, predicted not only that the GOP would win back control of the House — which the party did — but also that members would attempt to impeach Biden over his lack of effective border policies.
“You have stood down ICE and you’ve stood down Border Patrol, and guess what? That’s the impeachment hearing I want to hear,” he said on his “War Room” podcast.
“You’re going to sit there day after day and week after week and we’re going to bring the witnesses,” the host said. “We’re going to bring the witnesses of what you did to this country and what you did on the southern border.”
“Preserve your documents because after impeachment, they’re going to put you up on criminal charges. Criminal charges for allowing this country to be invaded by your actions,” he said.
“Acts of commission not acts of omission,” he said. “We’re not going to back down, so write it down. This November is about one thing: it’s impeaching Joe Biden to stop this madness and to stop this illegitimate regime from destroying our nation.”
