Despite genuine attempts from Texas state officials to secure the border and decrease migrant crossings, officials, pundits, and Democratic politicians denounce their efforts as inhumane, cruel, and "ugly." Three more migrants died over the weekend crossing the Rio Grande. Federal officials blamed Texas National Guard soldiers deployed by Gov. Greg Abbott, claiming Border Patrol agents attempted to rescue the migrants and were prevented from doing so (a claim they later walked back).
This situation is a tragic example of the escalating conflict between state border enforcement and federal immigration policy, between Abbott and President Joe Biden, between Texas and sanctuary cities. Texas officials and policies are being demonized for trying to deescalate a nearly impossible situation. Only the federal government is allowed to enforce immigration laws, the administration insists, yet somehow Texas alone has been tasked with keeping the nation's porous border secure with little federal support. The current border and immigration chaos is the result of bad policies, not bad intentions on the part of Texas officials.
The deaths of the migrants on the Rio Grande followed yet another controversial border decision that Biden's failure to enforce immigration laws forced Texas officials to make. Last week, Texas National Guard soldiers took control of a public park in Eagle Pass that Border Patrol had been using to hold migrants.
There was a reason for this takeover. Last month, 12,600 migrant encounters took place in a single day, the bulk of them at Eagle Pass. Fox News reported that facilities there were 260 percent over capacity. Migrants outnumbered agents 200 to 1.
Still, Texas cannot win for trying. Earlier this month the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Texas over a new law that allows state and local law enforcement officials to arrest, jail, and prosecute illegal migrants. Though many of the current immigration and border issues were caused by its own policies, the administration would have Texas officials handle the border on their own while also defending themselves from lawsuits for doing it wrong.
Even the tragic story of the recent migrant deaths follows a familiar pattern. As obvious as it might be, swimming across the Rio Grande to Texas is not a legal port of entry. Yet migrants and their young children regularly try to cross, risking drowning. Last year, a Texas Department of Public Safety agent saved a migrant family from drowning. Drowning became so common that officials placed wired buoys in the river to prevent people from going in. Abbott was scolded, then sued, for the move and the buoys were forcibly removed. Now that three more people have died trying to swim across the Rio Grande again, it's Abbott's fault, again.
Abbott's program to bus migrants to cities where they are supposedly welcome faces the same predicament. New York Mayor Eric Adams recently sued several bus companies for transporting migrants from Texas to New York, per Abbott's directives. According to Abbott's office, Texas has bused 100,000 migrants to so-called sanctuary cities. But now, cities which have received only a fraction of the migrants Texas has claim they've reached capacity. Yet Texas is supposed to continue to handle this issue alone, with the federal government as a foe rather than an ally?
Since Abbott launched Operation Lone Star—an effort to deploy as many resources as possible to secure the border and stop illegal migrant crossings—Texas has seen almost 500,000 apprehensions of illegal migrants. Law enforcement agencies have made 38,300 criminal arrests and seized over 453 million lethal doses of fentanyl.
As any good law enforcement officer or criminal attorney knows, instances of prevented crime and people who haven't died from fentanyl poisoning don't make the news—only the tragic events do. So while media outlets or Democratic politicians fail to acknowledge over 38,000 criminal arrests, three migrant deaths are reported and condemned immediately.
Texas officials are truly in a no-win predicament. If they don't actively counteract Biden's policies, the border remains a national threat and migrants become too numerous to process. If Abbott implements the policies he'd like—including laws, buoys, the Texas National Guard and more—Texas officials are demonized, sued, and smeared. Rest assured, what's happening now is not the result of bad actors, death wishes, or cruelty, but conflicts between state and federal laws and Texas and the Biden administration's views on how to implement them.
Nicole Russell is a mother of four who has worked in Republican politics. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, and the Washington Examiner. She is an opinion columnist at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Border Crisis Demands Stronger Federal Enforcement
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18.01.2024
Despite genuine attempts from Texas state officials to secure the border and decrease migrant crossings, officials, pundits, and Democratic politicians denounce their efforts as inhumane, cruel, and "ugly." Three more migrants died over the weekend crossing the Rio Grande. Federal officials blamed Texas National Guard soldiers deployed by Gov. Greg Abbott, claiming Border Patrol agents attempted to rescue the migrants and were prevented from doing so (a claim they later walked back).
This situation is a tragic example of the escalating conflict between state border enforcement and federal immigration policy, between Abbott and President Joe Biden, between Texas and sanctuary cities. Texas officials and policies are being demonized for trying to deescalate a nearly impossible situation. Only the federal government is allowed to enforce immigration laws, the administration insists, yet somehow Texas alone has been tasked with keeping the nation's porous border secure with little federal support. The current border and immigration chaos is the result of bad policies, not bad intentions on the part of Texas officials.
The deaths of the migrants on the Rio Grande followed yet another controversial border decision that Biden's failure to........
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