Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has called out President Joe Biden’s lack of attention to the resurgent border crisis, and now is taking the matter into his state’s own hands.
The Texas National Guard will be deploying 500 troops to the southern border with Mexico to stem the illegal activity at the border, Gov. Abbott announced.
“We will work to step up and try to fill the gap that the federal government is leaving open by making sure we deploy every resource, whether it be Department of Public Safety or Texas National Guard, whatever we need to do,” Abbott told reporters at a news conference Tuesday in Mission, Texas.
“Texas is going to fight for the safety and security of our state.”
Also, the DPS is adding about 1,200 state police officers to the region, and the bolstered National Guard forces will arrive by the end of the week, Stars and Stripes reported.
The National Guard has already been training for the deployment, according to Texas Military Department Maj. Gen. Tracy Norris.
“We have been supporting the border for our governor and our federal and state partners for over 15 years,” Norris said, per the report.
Abbott has a $800 million budget for border security in his state, which will fund the extra forces. About 100 of them were used on similar missions last year, and 1,000 used in 2019, per the report.
Thee 500 troops are in addition to the 3,600 U.S. National Guard already deployed to the border under the Trump administration and remain active under President Biden.
“There is a crisis on the Texas border right now with the overwhelming number of people coming across the border,” Abbott told reporters, per the report.” This crisis is a result of President Biden’s open border policies. It invites illegal immigration and is creating a humanitarian crisis in Texas right now that will grow increasingly worse by the day.”
The news comes one week after Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas rejected claims there was an immigration “crisis” at the southern border.
“I think there is a challenge at the border that we are managing, and we have our resources dedicated to managing it,” Mayorkas said. “The men and women of the Department of Homeland Security are working around the clock, seven days a week, to ensure that we do not have a crisis at the border, that we manage the challenge as acute as the challenge is, and they are not doing it alone.”
