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Gov. Greg Abbott says that since President Joe Biden assumed the presidency Jan. 20, the U.S.-Mexican border has been destabilized.
Efforts made by former President Donald Trump, including the "Remain in Mexico" policy, Title 42, mandating people seeking admittance have to prove their health status, ending the catch-and-release policy, and building a border barrier, were tossed aside. The result was chaos, he said during a Sept. 30 session of The Advance with Texas Public Policy Foundation CEO Kevin Roberts.
“What is Texas doing to respond to this?” Abbott asked rhetorically. “Let me tick through the things that we're doing, and I will tell you in advance, what Texas is doing is not only more than what any other state has ever done, I suggest that what Texas is doing is more than what every other state has ever done, added together because Texas is stepping up and doing everything possible to make sure we secure our border.”
People caught crossing both private and public land can be charged with criminal trespassing.
“When you add some other charges that we've come up with, it could lead to at a minimum of six months in jail or up to a year in jail,” he said. “We are now implementing this arrest and jail proceeding. We have more than 1,000 people behind bars in these jails in South Texas with many more beds available as we continue that process. On top of that we also now have funding where we are building the Texas border wall.
“This is such a huge construction project," Abbott added. "We needed to hire a general contractor, a program manager who would be in charge of all of the contracts that would be procured in order to build the wall. And we already have the program managers in place as two companies that have experience at building a wall at these procedures."
The process will be smoother and cheaper than federal efforts, he vowed.
“We will not be building any of those levee walls. Instead, they will be built on other territory. And as a result, our costs may be only half as much,” Abbott said. “And most of the regions that we will be building as it was with the Trump administration. We're working to speed faster and at a lower cost than the Trump administration was and being able to get up that wall.”
He has sent Department of Public Safety troopers and National Guard to the border and that helped reduce the flow of undocumented people into the country, the governor said. The Border Patrol said there was an “immediate” impact, Abbott said.
Texas has battled the Biden administration in court, and will continue to do so, he said. It got the Remain in Mexico policy reinstated, and is seeking to have the Title 42 policy reinstated as well.
“It shows that we are willing to take stands and take action that in the past has never been done before that are unorthodox approaches to use whatever strategy we possibly can to try to control the safety and security of the people in this state,” Abbott said.
The governor said he was proud of what he and the Texas Legislature accomplished this year.
Abbott said the legislature will do a fair job on redistricting borders, and if another special session is needed, he will call it.
“And it may be that the only item that I put on the next session is going to be redistricting until they get the redistricting process done,” he said.
He is proud of the balanced budget, with no new taxes and billions in savings, that was passed in 2021.
“Imagine if people in Washington could say what I'm about to tell you about what we did with our budget this session in Texas that we passed a balanced budget with no new taxes, leaving billions of dollars in our savings account,” Abbott said. “That is a conservative balanced budget that Washington needs to do. We've created a budgetary constraint system in the state of Texas that will be good for generations to come.”
Any budget increases must be linked to population increases and hikes in inflation, he said. This will control future spending, Abbott said.
“You see that we have a conservative framework that would be good for conservative budgets for decades to come in the Lone Star State,” he said. “On top of that, we passed what I called the freedom agenda, the freedom agenda goes to the core freedoms that we have guaranteed to us in the U.S. Constitution.”
That includes prohibiting any bans on church attendance and ensuring all viewpoints are allowed on social media.
Texas supports constitutional carry of firearms, and will not defund law enforcement, he said.
“We're going to respect and support our law enforcement officers, not disrespect and defund our police in Texas,” Abbott said.
He said fixing the broken bail system was “desperately needed” and that was accomplished after years of trying.
“You see the chaos in Harris County, in particular, where you see judges who ran for office and they told you who they were when they ran to be a judge,” Abbott said. “They said they were running as Democratic socialists, and they've acted as socialist jurists where they would release people on personal recognizance bonds for committing some of the most heinous crimes. And according to Crimestoppers in Houston, there have been something like 100 people in the Houston area who have lost their lives because of people who were released on bail that should not have been released on bail in Harris County. That has to stop. And that is why we passed the Damon Allen Act to reform a broken bail system in Texas to keep behind bars dangerous criminals.”
The governor said a new election integrity law has real teeth and will correct any flaws. He said ballot harvesting is especially dangerous, and it now is a third-degree felony. The state is going to take election security very seriously, Abbott said.
“Texas has the largest forensic audit election process of any state," he said. "We're going back and looking at exactly what happened in the 2020 elections in the four largest counties, the two largest Democratic, two largest Republican counties in the state of Texas to make sure that we have integrity embedded in our system. And if not, we'll find out what went wrong, why it went wrong, what can be done to correct it and to prosecute the allegations that have already been made to the secretary of state's office concerning this past election."
There has been no evidence of voter irregularities in Texas during the 2020 election. Trump carried the state by about 630,000 votes.
Abbott said he senses a political shift is underway in the state.
“One thing that gives me a lot of hope, and that is especially what we see among the Hispanic community along the border communities,” he said. “They feel completely abandoned by the Democrats that they have been voting for in the past. I've been down in border communities pretty much on a weekly basis for the past few months. And from county to county to county, I hear similar refrains. We made a huge mistake with Biden or Biden has abandoned us, or the only people helping us are Republicans.
"The Hispanic community represents the very best core values of the Republican Party," Abbott said. "And I see a very red future for the border communities in the state of Texas in a very red future for the Lone Star State.”