Texas Governor Greg Abbott has touted a sharp drop in border crossings in 2024, blaming it on state efforts and not Biden administration policies. Abbott says the Biden administration is trying to “destroy” Texas' gains and is hurting rather than helping border security efforts.
“Texas has the longest border of any state in the United States. And early on in the Biden administration, Texas has [President] Biden and [Vice President Kamala] Harris said in an interview with Fox News Digital.
Governor Abbott's aggressive strategy with Operation Lone Star, which included committing troops and resources to the border, building his own border wall after the Biden administration halted construction, placing buoys on the Rio Grande River, and erecting barbed wire fencing, has led to multiple legal battles between the state and the Biden administration. The White House has accused Governor Abbott of putting migrants and Border Patrol at risk and impeding federal law enforcement.
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After three years of a historic crisis at the southern border, encounter records have been repeatedly broken since Biden entered the White House, with numbers dropping dramatically over the summer.
The White House attributed the sharp decline in contacts to an executive order signed by President Biden in June restricting the entry of asylum seekers into the U.S. July's contacts were the lowest since September 2020.
The administration has said it needs more funding and reforms from Congress, but Republicans have voted against it for political reasons. In particular, officials point to a bipartisan bill that would have increased funding but placed some restrictions on immigration, a measure that failed to pass the Senate.
“For months, the Biden-Harris Administration worked with a bipartisan group of senators to craft a historic, bipartisan border security agreement that would add thousands of frontline agents to the border, but Republicans voted against the agreement twice, proving that Republicans are more interested in cynical politicking than they are in border security,” the White House said last month. “The Biden-Harris Administration has taken effective action while Republicans have done nothing.”
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Texas National Guard members monitor more than 1,000 migrants who crossed the Rio Grande River from Mexico overnight on Dec. 18, 2023, in Eagle Pass, Texas. (John Moore/Getty Images)
But Abbott said Texas' declines have nothing to do with those policies.
“Texas has seen an 85% drop in illegal immigration, higher than Arizona, New Mexico and California,” he said. “It shows that what Texas is doing is working, even as Biden and Harris are doing everything they can to try to take on Texas and destroy what we've built.”
Abbott's comments come amid an ongoing political battle over who is to blame for the border crisis and which presidential candidate is best placed to resolve it.
Harris recently argued that she is the better candidate to resolve the border crisis, focusing on a bipartisan Senate bill and blaming former President Trump for its failure.
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“As president, I will restore the bipartisan border security bill he killed and sign it into law. I am confident we can uphold our proud tradition as a nation of immigrants and reform our broken immigration system. Path to Citizenship And we will secure our border,” she said at the Democratic National Convention.
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Abbott said Harris believes in an “open borders” policy and will support Trump in the November election.
“Americans need to learn the reality of how policies have changed under the Biden-Harris administration and what Kamala Harris will do to steer America down a path of destruction,” he said.
