Texas National Guard Rolls Into Eagle Pass, Immediately Gets to Work
As President Joe Biden’s administration weathers yet another border crisis — this one in Eagle Pass, Texas — GOP Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is doing something about it. Not only that, he’s getting results.
According to NewsNation, the Texas National Guard and Department of Public Safety troopers arrived in Eagle Pass to help handle the situation after the mayor of the border town issued a disaster declaration.
The Eagle Pass sector of the southern border has already seen 270,000 encounters with illegal migrants in fiscal year 2023. However, on Wednesday, over 10,000 people alone crossed into Eagle Pass from Mexico, sources within U.S. Customs and Border Protection said.
“Numbers like that haven’t been seen since before the end of the pandemic-era policy Title 42, which allowed officials to turn migrants away on public health grounds. Before Title 42’s expiration May 11, illegal crossings started to surge, although shortly after the policy was lifted, they dropped dramatically,” NewsNation reported.
“There has been a situation the last couple of days where we have gotten an influx of immigrants crossing through Eagle Pass. And it has taken a toll on our local resources,” Eagle Pass Mayor Rolando Salinas told NewsNation after issuing the disaster declaration.
“I’ve been getting a lot of calls from our constituents, and they get worried — they see a lot of a lot of people in our community. But it is my understanding that some of these people, they don’t want to be there. So they’re leaving [the shelters], and they’re on our streets, and I understand the concerns of a lot of people.”
Footage of the border tweeted by Townhall.com’s Julio Rosas on Saturday showed the Texas National Guard “preventing illegal immigrants from entering Eagle Pass.”
🚨: The National Guard is preventing illegal immigrants from entering Eagle Pass. pic.twitter.com/tAVe9KyAQd
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) September 23, 2023
Further footage from Rosas from “a different spot along the Rio Grande” reported to show “illegal immigrants … finding a way through the [concertina wire] despite the National Guard being there.”
“After the group passed through, Guardsmen placed more C-wire in the gap illegal immigrants used to enter Eagle Pass,” he noted.
After the group passed through, Guardsmen placed more C-wire in the gap illegal immigrants used to enter Eagle Pass. pic.twitter.com/bP8HDAotQl
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) September 23, 2023
In a tweet earlier this week, Gov. Abbott said that Biden administration border officials were cutting the razor concertina wire being used “in Eagle Pass to stop illegal crossings.”
“I immediately deployed more Texas National Guard to repel illegal crossings & install more razor wire,” Abbott said in the Tuesday tweet, which showed unidentified officials cutting the wire and letting illegal immigrants through.
Texas installed razor wire in Eagle Pass to stop illegal crossings.
Today the Biden Admin CUT that wire, opening the floodgates to illegal immigrants.
I immediately deployed more Texas National Guard to repel illegal crossings & install more razor wire. pic.twitter.com/eMtLS8Z6WI
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) September 20, 2023
While it’s unclear who gave the order to cut the wire or how far up the order stretched, it wouldn’t be out of character for the Biden administration, which has dealt with the latest border crisis in the same way they’ve dealt with prior border crises: By essentially asking, “What crisis?”
The administration’s idea of alleviating the problem has been to offer work permits to nearly half a million Venezuelan illegal immigrants who arrived in the country before July 31, according to NBC News.
Like so many asylum measures of this sort, it offers a degree of plausible deniability: No, obviously we’re not encouraging illegal immigration, the administration will say, because this only applies to those already here! And we absolutely won’t ever do it again for the people arriving now. Until we do, of course.
Instead of taking half-measures like that, meanwhile, Gov. Abbott, the Texas National Guard and troopers with the Department of Public Safety are enforcing the border laws the White House refuses to. Come 2024, one hopes these four videos stick in America’s mind — and factor into the choice they make at the ballot box accordingly.
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