Abbott’s RNC remarks reinforce his attack on Biden’s border policy – ​​Houston Public Media

Mike Segar/REUTERS via Texas Tribune

Gov. Greg Abbott lashed out at President Joe Biden on immigration on Wednesday, telling Republican National Convention delegates that the current administration has abdicated its duty to keep the country safe before falsely crediting former President Donald Trump with “closing off illegal immigration.”

“Biden abandoned his duties on his first day in office,” Abbott told thousands of delegates gathered in Milwaukee. “He destroyed President Trump’s policies, and the result was catastrophic.”

Abbott has also promised to continue sending migrants to so-called “sanctuary cities” in northern states like New York and Illinois, a policy that has cost Texas taxpayers at least $148 million since it was announced in 2022.

“When Joe Biden and Kamala Harris refused to even come to Texas to see the border crisis, I took the border to them,” he said. “We continued to bus migrants to sanctuary cities across the country. These buses will continue to run until we finally secure our border.”

Abbott also reiterated his support for Trump. “He will enforce immigration laws,” Abbott said. “He will fight the Mexican drug cartels. He will arrest illegal immigrants and put them behind bars or send them back.”

Abbott’s speech capped a series of speeches that largely focused on immigration and portrayed migrants as criminals who “trespassed” across the U.S.-Mexico border. The speech came amid the ongoing aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, which left tens of thousands of residents in southeast Texas without power for days. Since the storm made landfall earlier this month, Abbott has faced criticism for being in Asia on a business trip — a decision he defended. He missed the first two days of the convention, which began Monday, to deal with the storm’s aftermath.

Abbott’s speech came days after U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced that the number of migrants apprehended by federal authorities dropped 32% in June, one of the first numbers released since Biden’s executive order that broadly halted asylum for migrants took effect on June 5.

Biden’s order was in response to apprehensions in Texas, which peaked in March at 54,172 but declined in the months since. Across the southern border, apprehensions peaked this year in February at 140,628 — a significant drop from the Border Patrol’s record of 249,785 apprehensions in December.

In his speech, Abbott also touted his decision to send thousands of Texas Department of Public Safety and National Guard troops to the border as part of Operation Lone Star, a program he launched in March 2021 — two months after Biden took office — to combat what he decried as inadequate enforcement of federal immigration laws, a mission that has cost Texas taxpayers $11 billion so far.

Over the course of three and a half years, the state has strung rows of barbed wire along the banks of the Rio Grande, used shipping containers to build makeshift walls and cleared the ground for an 80-acre military base in Eagle Pass that could house up to 2,300 troops.

While the operation lacked clear measures of progress or accountability, Abbott credited Operation Lone Star with a recent decline in illegal border crossings through Texas. But foreign policy analysts say the migration patterns are complex and not easily explained by a single variable — for example, they point to record illegal crossings at the Texas-Mexico border during the first three years of the operation, before the spring shift in migration to California and Arizona.

Delegates were decidedly less choosy on Wednesday, instead chanting “send them back!” as Abbott spoke.

Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs and engages Texans on public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.