Taking matters into his own hands, given the disastrous immigration policies of the Biden administration and its “willful” disregard for the rule of law, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced Thursday that his state will build a border wall.
Abbott announced during an appearance on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle” that Texas has allocated $1 billion in its fiscal year budget toward border security and that he will use some of that funding to resume construction of the border wall started by former President Donald Trump.
“To make a fine point on it, we have to build a border wall,” Abbott said. “I’ve been down here talking to the people in the Rio Grande Valley and the way they are being overrun is reprehensible, it’s disastrous what the Biden administration has done.”
Host Laura Ingraham asked the governor how they will get the wall built without the help of the federal government, and Abbott said, “Texas will build it ourselves.”
“However, tonight is not the night to announce those details. Those details about building a wall will be made next week,” he added. “We’ve been through the process, however, of analyzing what it will take, the steps that are needed, the legal processes that are required. We believe that we can do it in a multistep process.”
(Video: Fox News)
One of President Joe Biden’s first actions upon taking office was to halt the construction of the wall, calling it a “waste of money that diverts attention from genuine threats to our homeland security.”
There were reports in May that Biden would restart construction in the Rio Grande Valley, but the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers responded to say the work is on a flood levee and that “wall construction remains paused to the extent permitted by law.”
To be clear, wall construction remains paused to extent permitted by law. Per DHS, we’ve started critical work to repair the Rio Grande Valley’s flood levee, which was excavated to make way for border wall. This remediation work will not involve expanding border barrier.
— USACE HQ (@USACEHQ) May 13, 2021
Abbott said Trump “had adequately secured our border,” pointing to the “Remain in Mexico” policy and the building of the border wall.
“And now suddenly all of that disappeared and… it’s led to a dramatic increase in the number of people coming across the border but it’s not just unaccompanied minors, its people were causing great damage and harm to the residents right here in Del Rio as well as people up and down the border,” he said.
The governor spoke of a “multitude of actions” he will be taking to address the record number of illegal immigrants flowing into the United States, largely incentivized by a Democrat sitting in the White House.
Abbott stated last week in an appearance on “Hannity” that Texas “is going to start arresting everybody coming across the border — not just arresting them, but because this is not going to be aggravated trespass, they are going to be spending a half a year in jail, if not a year in jail.”
He explained to Ingraham that the stiffer jail penalties come as a result of him declaring the crisis a disaster.
“We’re going to take this very seriously,” Abbott said. “We’re going to do everything possible to secure our border, including building a border wall.”
Asked if he believes the border crisis is purposeful on the part of the administration, the Republican governor said what we are seeing is a “willful” refusal to do what we know works.
In fact, Abbott accused Biden of “abandoning the border.”
“I feel certain that it’s willful, it is purposeful,” he said. “It’s wanton disregard for the border laws, for the immigration laws, for the border communities, for candidly anybody in the United States of America. The Biden administration has abandoned the border, any pretense of border security, any pretense of enforcing our immigration laws.”
“They’ve laughed it off just the exact same way that the vice president laughed it off in our interview the other day, and so it is a joke to the Biden administration,” he added. “But we’re not taking it as a joke in Texas. We are going to step up and respond the way we must respond to secure the sovereignty of our state, to prevent the invasion that’s taken place in front of our very own eyes.”
Abbott concluded by saying the administration is “fighting us every step of the way.”
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The longest-tenured writer at BizPac Review, Tom grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills.
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