Governor Greg Abbott today hand-delivered a letter to President Joe Biden, upon his arrival in El Paso for his first trip to the border, calling on him to do his job and secure the border by enforcing federal immigration laws.
In the letter, the Governor provided five specific actions the President can immediately take to secure the border and restore order to an out-of-control immigration crisis.
“This chaos is the direct result of your failure to enforce the immigration laws that Congress enacted,” reads the letter. “Your open-border policies have emboldened the cartels, who grow wealthy by trafficking deadly fentanyl and even human beings. Texans are paying an especially high price for your failure, sometimes with their very lives, as local leaders from your own party will tell you if given the chance. On behalf of all Americans, I implore you: Secure our border by enforcing Congress’s immigration laws.”
The Governor handed the letter to President Biden after greeting him on the tarmac at the El Paso International Airport. This visit marks the President’s first trip to the southern border since being sworn into office almost two years ago.
The letter reads:
The Honorable Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
President of the United States
Dear President Biden:
Your visit to our southern border with Mexico today is $20 billion too little and two years too
late. Moreover, your visit avoids the sites where mass illegal immigration occurs and sidesteps
the thousands of angry Texas property owners whose lives have been destroyed by your border
policies. Even the city you visit has been sanitized of the migrant camps which had overrun
downtown El Paso because your Administration wants to shield you from the chaos that Texans
experience on a daily basis. This chaos is the direct result of your failure to enforce the
immigration laws that Congress enacted.
Under President Trump, the federal government achieved historically low levels of illegal
immigration. Under your watch, by contrast, America is suffering the worst illegal immigration
in the history of our country. Your open-border policies have emboldened the cartels, who grow
wealthy by trafficking deadly fentanyl and even human beings. Texans are paying an especially
high price for your failure, sometimes with their very lives, as local leaders from your own party
will tell you if given the chance.
All of this is happening because you have violated your constitutional obligation to defend the
States against invasion through faithful execution of federal laws. Halfway through your
presidency, though, I can finally welcome you to the border. When you finish the photo-ops in a
carefully stage-managed version of El Paso, you have a job to do:
• You must comply with the many statutes mandating that various categories of aliens
“shall” be detained, and end the practice of unlawfully paroling aliens en masse.
• You must stop sandbagging the implementation of the Remain-in-Mexico policy and
Title 42 expulsions, and fully enforce those measures as the federal courts have ordered
you to do.
• You must aggressively prosecute illegal entry between ports of entry, and allow ICE to
remove illegal immigrants in accordance with existing federal laws.
• You must immediately resume construction of the border wall in the State of Texas,
using the billions of dollars Congress has appropriated for that purpose.
• You must designate the Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
On behalf of all Americans, I implore you: Secure our border by enforcing Congress’s
immigration laws.
