Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced Sunday to Fox News there has been no discernable change at the border since President Joe Biden’s June 4, 2024 executive order targeting immigration, before claiming it’s “accelerating” migrant crossings instead.
Abbott appeared on “Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo” to discuss the ongoing southern border crisis as his state continues to take action to secure its border. Fox host Maria Bartiromo began by questioning the Texas governor on if he’s seen any change at the border since Biden announced his executive order Tuesday, which will pause new asylum requests after migrant crossings hit a seven-day daily average of 2,500 and resume after hitting a seven-day daily average of 1,500. (RELATED: Biden Unveils Immigration Executive Order After Months Of Insisting There’s Nothing He Could Do)
“None whatsoever,” Abbott said. “Listen, people need to understand that what Biden has done, he’s not doing anything to actually secure the border. In fact, it’s the opposite because he’s actually authorizing more people to cross the border illegally. And think about this: when you get to that 2,500 number of people crossing the border a day that he says he will allow, but only then stop the asylum process, when he stops the asylum process, there’s nothing that Biden is doing that actually is preventing anybody else from crossing the border.”
“There’s no type of enforcement mechanism in place, and so as long as the Biden administration refuses to provide any type of enforcement, any type of blockage of people crossing illegally, all this new Biden policy is going to do is to actually attract and invite even more people to cross the border illegally. And you’ve seen on videos ever since the Biden order went into place: there’s no slowing down of people crossing the border; in fact, it’s just accelerating.”
“And so this is gaslighting our fellow Americans when Biden gets up and says this is gonna stop people from coming across the border, when he says this is going to secure the border — in fact, it is making the border illegal crossings worse,” Abbott said.
Data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection has shown that through March and April 2024 numbers of encounters between ports of entry along the southwest border hit over 100,000 each month. In March, the Border Patrol recorded 137,480 encounters; in April the count dropped 6%, with authorities recording 128,900 encounters.
The New York Post in addition, recently revealed the Biden administration has been operating a “mass amnesty” program for migrants, with over 350,000 asylum cases filed by migrants since 2022 being closed by the U.S. government if the person did not have a criminal record or was deemed a threat to the U.S. The termination of their cases means that, in addition to being removed from the legal system, they no longer need to report to U.S. authorities and are allowed to move throughout the country without fear of deportation, the outlet reported.
