What Is Texas Doing to Secure the Border?

            The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday is a simple one: sovereign nations have the right and responsibility to secure their borders and to control who enters or leaves their country. Another simple fact is that the Biden administration has failed to maintain the secure borders created by the Trump administration. This situation has put extreme stress on the states, particularly the states located along the southern border.

            The State of Texas has decided to do something about the open border between Mexico and Texas. If the federal government will not build a barrier along the border, then Texas will build it. Texas Governor Greg Abbott said on Thursday that his state will begin erecting barriers along the Rio Grande in the areas of easy crossing. When the area is secured, then Texas will start making mass arrests and jailing immigrants on state charges.

            According to an interview with Breitbart Texas before a summit on the border, Abbott declared, “The influx across the border is out of control, and the Biden Administration has shown that [it] is not going to step up and do its job.” The governor wants to send a message to anyone planning to cross the border illegally. 

What people have seen in videos across the country seems to be the Biden Administration welcoming these people to the United States. We won’t be sending that message…. If you come to Texas, you’re subject to being arrested. You’re not going to have a pathway to roam the country. You’re going to have a pathway directly into a jail cell.”

            Abbott has already declared a state of emergency. Besides planning the physical barriers along the border, his administration plans to “provide a legal basis to arrest people independently of federal immigration law.” Texas learned from the 2010 Supreme Court case that involved an Arizona law that limits the power of states in the field of immigration. States do not have the power to arrest anyone simply for being in the state illegally, but States can enforce their police-power laws.

            Abbott explained to Breitbart Texas that moving or interfering with the border barrier involves several crimes – crimes such as “criminal mischief, criminal trespass, and vandalism of state or local-government property.”

            Because Texas has declared an emergency, the punishments for these crimes may be increased by one classification. Abbott explained, “Something that may be a Class B misdemeanor right now, turned into a class A misdemeanor…. That means up to 180 days in jail.” Abbott added, “there’s even potential for state jail felonies for some of these crimes.”

            Abbott and his administration decided to act after crossings of the border saw “massive increases” that were “concentrated in the Rio Grande Valley.” Residents of the Del Rio region are “seeing a lot of very bad dangerous people come across the border…. They need help from the state to help them address this exploding crisis.”

            Securing the border is a responsibility of the federal government, but the federal government under the Biden administration is not doing its job. Governor Abbott and his administration is stepping up to do the job that the federal government will not do for the safety and security of Texas residents and all Americans.