Texas Governor Greg Abbott is defending Texas’ right to secure the border through the recent deployment of floating marine barriers in the Rio Grande River in Eagle Pass as part of the state’s unprecedented response to America’s ongoing border crisis.
In a letter on Monday, July 24, to President Joe Biden, the Governor counters threats by the U.S. Department of Justice to sue the state over the barriers by pointing out that the U.S. Constitution grants Texas sovereign authority to protect its borders because the President refuses to enforce federal immigration laws.
“If you truly care about human life, you must begin enforcing federal immigration laws,” reads the letter. “By doing so, you can help me stop migrants from wagering their lives in the waters of the Rio Grande River. You can also help me save Texans, and indeed all Americans, from deadly drugs like fentanyl, cartel violence, and the horrors of human trafficking. To end the risk that migrants will be harmed crossing the border illegally, you must fully enforce the laws of the United States that prohibit illegal immigration between ports of entry. In the meantime, Texas will fully utilize its constitutional authority to deal with the crisis you have caused. Texas will see you in court, Mr. President.”
In addition to highlighting Texas’ right to defend its borders, Governor Abbott argues against claims that Texas’ floating marine barriers violate Section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act. Governor Abbott also included a copy of the January 8, 2023 letter he hand-delivered to President Biden in El Paso and the November 16, 2022 letter to the President that outline America’s current immigration laws President Biden must enforce to satisfy his constitutional obligation to safeguard American citizens and the sovereign authority of states to protect their borders when the President refuses to do so.
In the letter, Abbott wrote: “…Your lawyers’ claim that Texas’s floating marine barriers violate Section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act misses the mark. In that statute, Congress decreed that “it shall not be lawful to build . . . any wharf, pier, dolphin, boom, weir, breakwater, bulkhead, jetty, or other structures in any . . . water of the United States.” 33 U.S.C. § 403. To state the obvious, that statute does not describe any action by the State of Texas.”
Abbott believes Texas’s action is a side issue.
“The fact is, if you would just enforce the immigration laws Congress already has on the books, America would not be suffering from your record-breaking level of illegal immigration. While I share the humanitarian concerns noted in your lawyers’ letter, Mr. President, your finger points in the wrong direction. Neither of us wants to see another death in the Rio Grande River. Yet your open-border policies encourage migrants to risk their lives by crossing illegally through the water, instead of safely and legally at a port of entry. Nobody drowns on a bridge,” he wrote.
Abbott also asserts in the letter that Biden, through inaction, has caused an unprecedented crisis of inhumanity through the following:
- Two years before Texas deployed the floating marine barriers, and a year before it deployed concertina wire, a United Nations agency declared that the border between the United States and Mexico is the deadliest land crossing in the world, with 728 migrant deaths recorded in 2021.
- Before Texas took the action about which Biden now complains, hundreds of migrants drowned in the Rio Grande River trying to cross the border illegally.
- Before Texas took the action about which Biden now complains, 53 migrants who illegally crossed the border died in the back of an 18-wheel tractor trailer near San Antonio.
- Before Texas took the action about which Biden now complains, thousands of Americans lost their lives to the fentanyl that pours across the border daily.
“If you truly care about human life, you must begin enforcing federal immigration laws. By doing so, you can help me stop migrants from wagering their lives in the waters of the Rio Grande River. You can also help me save Texans, and indeed all Americans, from deadly drugs like fentanyl, cartel violence, and the horrors of human trafficking. To end the risk that migrants will be harmed crossing the border illegally, you must fully enforce the laws of the United States that prohibit illegal immigration between ports of entry. In the meantime, Texas will fully utilize its constitutional authority to deal with the crisis you have caused,” Abbott wrote in the letter to Biden.
I wish he would run for president
Biden doesn’t care about human life. He only cares about what ice cream he eats, if his diaper is changed, and making his crackhead son rich as hell.