Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott hand-delivered a letter to President Joe Biden when he arrived in El Paso on Sunday for his first trip to the southern border, accusing the president of being at fault for the current crisis.
"This chaos is the direct result of your failure to enforce the immigration laws that Congress enacted," read the letter. "Your open-border policies have emboldened the cartels, who grow wealthy by trafficking deadly fentanyl and even human beings."
Abbott called upon Biden to secure the border by taking five specific actions: detain and deport illegal aliens, retain the "remain in Mexico" policy and Title 42, prosecute illegal entry and allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement to remove migrants, resume construction of the border wall and designate Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
Abbott has already secured $4 billion in funding for Texas' border security. He launched Operation Lone Star, deploying thousands of Texas National Guard soldiers and Texas Department of Public Safety troopers to help return migrants.
Abbott also signed a law to make it easier to prosecute smugglers bringing people into Texas, as well as 15 laws cracking down on human trafficking.
The Texas governor has gone toe-to-toe with Democrats by sending migrants to sanctuary cities like New York and Washington, D.C. In return, mayors like New York's Eric Adams complained about the strain on resources that the migrants put on the system.
"For months, New Yorkers have seen an influx of asylum seekers from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. And every day since, we have far surpassed our moral and legal mandates to serve the more than 36,400 asylum seekers who have arrived here," Adams said in a press conference. "We have, largely on our own, provided shelter, clothes, food, education, health care, legal support and a host of other services to asylum seekers — more than any other city in this country. But, as we have said for months, we cannot continue to maintain this flow."
Adams cheered Biden's new border policy to rapidly deport migrants from specific countries such as Cuba and Venezuela. The New York mayor does not feel that is enough, requesting $1 billion in federal aid.
"All of this is happening because you have violated your constitutional obligation to defend the states against invasion through faithful execution of federal laws," wrote Abbott. "When you finish the photo-ops in a carefully stage-managed version of El Paso, you have a job to do."
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