Former President Donald Trump toured a completed section of border wall in South Texas Wednesday with Governor Greg Abbott and local law enforcement. They stopped at the Department of Public Safety headquarters in Weslaco then toured a section of border wall near McAllen.
"We have a sick country in many ways," the former president said during a roundtable with Department of Public Safety officials, local law enforcement, the governor and lieutenant governor. "It's sick in elections; it's sick on the border, and if you don't have good elections, and if you don't have a strong border, you don't have a country."
Abbott launched "Operation Lone Star" in March, sending DPS troopers and the National Guard to "high threat areas." Since that operation started, he says troopers have apprehended 40,000 people, arrested 1,800 on criminal charges and raided 41 "stash houses," used to hide people brought into the country illegally.
"This is the first time ever, I'm aware of, that a governor had to make a disaster declaration for the border situation, and yet, that's exactly what we did," Abbott said.
Steve McCraw, director of Texas DPS, said troopers had a 527% increase in apprehensions in January 2021 compared to January 2020. He said the increase "overwhelmed" troopers because many were families or unaccompanied children.
"They cannot process them quick enough," McCraw said. "They're overwhelmed, that leaves a gap. What does that gap do? That leaves an opportunity for the cartels to smuggle the drugs, transnational gangs and also criminals from around the world that exploit that."
Wednesday afternoon, the Texas Democratic Party planned a response outside the Texas Capitol, calling the former president's visit a "stunt." The party said Abbott was ignoring "the biggest issue facing Texans today," saying he should instead focus on stabilizing the electric grid.
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