A day after warning Texas to remove the buoys on Monday afternoon, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Republican Governor Abbott to force Texas to remove floating barriers in the Rio Grande.
Biden administration officials blasted Abbott for his “dangerous and illegal” actions undermining Biden’s border efficiency plan.
“President Biden’s border enforcement plan has led to the lowest levels of illegal border crossings in more than two years,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Abdullah Hasan told PoliticusUSA.
“Governor Abbott’s dangerous and illegal actions undermine this effective plan, making it difficult for the men and women of Border Patrol to do their job of securing the border and putting migrants and border agents at risk.”
President Biden’s plan has been criticized in advance (including by me) in anticipation of further chaos as he faced the expiration of Title 42, which was a pandemic rule that allowed US authorities to refuse asylum seekers. But Biden’s plan is actually working.
“If Governor Abbott really wanted to move toward real solutions, he would ask his fellow Republicans in Congress why they voted against President Biden’s request to increase funding for the Department of Homeland Security and why they are blocking comprehensive immigration reform and border security measures that would finally fix our broken immigration system,” Hasan added.
This is a point we have covered extensively on Sub-stack: Republicans have thrown the border into President Biden’s lap, including refusing to fund the administration’s border patrol requests, which is truly odd behavior from people who think the problem is so bad it justifies killing children.
Abbott’s scandalously inhumane border policies were detailed in an email sent by a soldier to his superior, in which he wrote: “I believe we have crossed a line into the inhuman” after being ordered to push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande.
The officer “suggests that Texas set up ‘traps’ of barrels wrapped in razor wire in parts of the river with high water and low visibility,” which “increased the risk of drowning by forcing migrants into deeper stretches of the river.”
It will come as no surprise, then, that Abbott claimed that the lifting of Title 42 would “cause catastrophic disaster in the United States.”
But that didn’t happen. An administration official pointed out that President Biden’s new border policy has led to the lowest levels of illegal border crossings in more than two years.
In fact, the Washington Post reported, “The preliminary result is an almost 70% drop in illegal entries since early May, according to the latest data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. After two years of breaking records and crisis tensions, the Biden the administration appears to have better control over the southern border than at any time since the start of 2021.
It’s also worth mentioning that the Biden administration is achieving its goals for the purpose of humanity, including a stockpiled facility of infant formula, diapers, and snacks.
The administration official also pointed out, “We have over 24,000 agents and officers working to secure the border day and night.”
They say they’re taking thousands of smugglers off the streets, catching record levels of fentanyl before it even reaches our border, installing cutting-edge border security technologies like automated surveillance towers and linear floor detection systems, pushing for additional asylum officers and immigration judges to review asylum claims while increasing support for border communities.
“Republican officials have no plan and are just playing political games,” an administration official said. “Now, instead of taking the border challenge seriously, they are blocking the comprehensive immigration reform and border security measures that President Biden proposed on his first day in office and opposing needed funds for border security. Republican officials don’t want solutions; they want chaos.
It is very difficult to see where the administration is wrong on this issue. Critics are not happy that Biden said he would veto a Republican House bill that restricts asylum and builds more border walls. The president also promised to veto a bill that cut the program allowing Ukrainian refugees and migrants to stay in the United States.
But none of these things actually secure the border while maintaining American ideals and values. What Biden is doing right now is actually achieving those goals, albeit imperfectly.
But regardless, Biden’s plan is working, and he’s morally infinitely superior to pushing babies back into the Rio Grande.
Beto O’Rourke demanded action from the Biden administration, and they rightly did. “Stop him from deploying barbed wire and medieval drowning devices designed to trap and maim. Stop all the illegal things he is doing on the border that end up killing human beings. Mr President, we need you to act”, O’Rourke wrote.
There is no justification for Abbott’s cruelty to migrants. President Biden’s plan is actually working. If Abbott really wanted to stop the flow of illegal migration, he would work to ensure the Biden administration had more of what it needed.
Listen to Sarah on the PoliticusUSA Pod on The Daily Newsletter Podcast here.
Sarah has been accredited to cover President Barack Obama, then Vice President Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, and has exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi on several occasions and exclusively covered her first home appearance following the first impeachment of then-President Donald Trump.
Sarah is a two-time Telly award-winning video producer and a Fellow of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on JobJuggernaut @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
