Governor Greg Abbott announced the new position of Texas Border Czar to oversee security as the state faces a record number of illegal immigrants at the border.
QUICK FACTS:
- Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) named former Border Patrol Agent Mike Banks the new “border czar” for the state of Texas during a news conference Monday, saying the position is a “full-time job” that requires a leader whose sole focus is to halt President Joe Biden’s open border policies.
- “For nearly two years, the State of Texas has taken unprecedented, historic action under Operation Lone Star in response to the Biden Administration’s refusal to secure the border,” Abbott said. “To continue doing what no other state in the history of our country has done to secure the border, I hired Mike Banks as the State of Texas’ first-ever Border Czar.”
- Abbott explained Banks’ office will be in Weslaco, Texas, with his biggest task being to assist in working with local landowners and building the 30-foot border state-funded border wall to fill in the gaps that were left once Biden took office.
- “The reason why this wall is located here and the reason why you will see other segments of wall placed in different locations around the state is because we are putting wall up where we get the land rights from the land owner to be able to build a border wall,” Abbott stated. “Most of the land on the border is private property. And we have to get the rights from the private property owners to build a border wall in those segments. You’ll see more of these going up.”
- In a new poll conducted by NBC News, Americans agreed that immigration issues were a top priority, with 75% of those asked saying Congress needed to increase border security.
TEXAS GOV. GREG ABBOTT ON APPOINTING A BORDER CZAR TO SECURE WHAT BIDEN REFUSES TO:
“We’re not gonna stand idly by while the Biden administration refuses to enforce the immigration laws as our borders are,” Abbott said.
BACKGROUND:
- In the border state of Arizona, Democrat Katie Hobbs plans to use former Gov. Doug Ducey’s program to transport illegal immigrants to their final destination on taxpayer money.
- “If we’re spending the money to bus people, why not just get them to their final destination?” Hobbs recently said.
- Under Ducey’s program, illegals have been bussed to Washington, D.C. and also reportedly given the chance to travel by plane.
- Last month, Abbott said Texas has bussed nearly 16,000 illegal aliens to sanctuary cities across the U.S. in 2022 alone.
- “Texas has bused over 15,900 migrants to sanctuary cities,” Abbott wrote on Twitter. “We’re providing relief to local communities overwhelmed by President Biden’s open border policies.”
- Around the same time, Abbott sent a letter to Biden, demanding help from the federal government to “address the dire border crisis, particularly in the city of El Paso.”
- “This terrible crisis for border communities in Texas is a catastrophe of your own making,” Abbott wrote in the letter. “These communities and the state are ill-equipped to do the job assigned to the federal government—house the thousands of migrants flooding into the country every day. With perilous temperatures moving into the area, many of these migrants are at risk of freezing to death on city streets.”
