Governor Greg Abbott has sent a letter to county judges along the Rio Grande, urging them to contact federal lawmakers before the next Congress is sworn in. The 118th Congress is scheduled to start January 3, 2023.
"As you know, President Biden has abandoned his responsibility to enforce immigration laws, and Congress has refused to hold the President accountable and has abandoned its own responsibility to use the immigration power given to it in Article I, § 8 of the U.S. Constitution," Abbott writes.
Abbott says Texas has spent more than $4 billion on border security, listing items he has included in executive orders:
• Deploy the National Guard to safeguard our border and to repel and turn back immigrants trying to cross the border illegally;
• Deploy the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) to arrest and return to the border immigrants who crossed illegally and deploy DPS to arrest illegal immigrants for criminal activity;
• Build a border wall in multiple counties on the border;
• Deploy gun boats to secure the border;
• Designate Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations;
• Enter into a compact with other states to secure the border;
• Enter into agreements with foreign powers to enhance border security;
• Provide resources for border counties to increase their efforts to respond to the border invasion.
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In the letter, Abbott writes Congress should reimburse Texas for the money spent by the state.
"Join me in sending this urgent message to our congressional delegation, which has the power to act under Article I, § 8 of the U.S. Constitution," Abbott writes. "Texas has done more than its fair share for far too long. The time has come for the federal government to do its job."
Customs and Border Protection says officers had 230,678 "enforcement encounters" along the entire border last month, up from 164,837 in October 2021. CBP said, for the fiscal year ending at the end of September, agents had 2.2 million encounters, the highest number ever.
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