(The Center Square) – Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday night urged Americans to secure the border by returning former President Donald Trump to the White House as president.
“As the governor of the largest border state,” Abbott said, “America needs a president who will secure our border. America needs Donald J. Trump.”
“The president’s most sacred duty is to protect our country,” which President Trump did, he said. Under Trump, “we had the lowest illegal border crossings in about four decades.
“By contrast, Joe Biden deserted his duty. On his first day in office, he gutted President Trump’s policies. The result has been catastrophic.”
The greatest number of illegal border crossers have entered the U.S. while Biden’s been in office of over 12 million, including two million who evaded capture, known as gotaways, The Center Square first reported.
Under Biden, the number of people who have been apprehended illegally entering the U.S. total more than the populations of 44 individual states and 155 countries.
Last month, more than 205,000 illegally entered the U.S., The Center Square reported, bringing the total number to more than 2.4 million in fiscal 2024 through June, with apprehensions at the northern border setting another record.
“Biden has welcomed into our country rapists, murderers, even terrorists and the price we have paid has been deadly,” Abbott said. “Among the many victims was 12-year-old Jocelyn from Houston, raped and murdered” by two Venezuelans released into the country through a parole program created by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Mayorkas’ parole programs have been linked to violent crimes committed nationwide against Americans by criminals released into the country, The Center Square reported.
On Tuesday night, a Maryland resident shared how his sister was raped and strangled to death by a Salvadoran in the country illegally. Maryland resident Michael Morin said his sister, Rachel’s, death “was preventable. The monster arrested for killing Rachel entered the U.S. unlawfully after killing a woman in El Salvador. Joe Biden and his designated ‘border czar’ Kamala Harris opened our borders to him and others like him, empowering them to victimize the innocent. Yet to this day, we have not heard from Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. They never apologized.
“When Rachel was killed, President Trump called my family to offer his condolences. He wanted to meet with us. He cared. That is leadership. And we need real leadership back in the White House.”
“To make matters even worse, Biden is fighting tooth and nail to stop Texas and other Republican states from defending our border,” Abbott said. Texas has sued the Biden administration over 75 times, with dozens of lawsuits over border security.”
Abbott first deployed Texas National Guard troops to the border in 2021 and launched Operation Lone Star, Texas’ border security mission, to do what the president refused to do, he’s argued. To fund it, the Texas legislature has allocated nearly $12 billion, more than multiple state fiscal year budgets and more than what the Trump administration allocated to federal border security efforts in Texas, The Center Square first reported.
From March 2021 through the end of June this year, OLS officers have apprehended nearly 515,000 illegal border crossers and made more than 44,600 criminal arrests, with more than 38,900 felony charges reported. They’ve also seized more than 504 million lethal doses of fentanyl, enough to kill everyone in the U.S. and Mexico combined.
After Texas constructed hundreds of miles of razor wire to stop illegal crossings, the president ordered that the wires be cut and removed and sued Texas to stop building them. In response, Abbott ordered the National Guard to build triple the amount of razor wire barriers. A lawsuit over the razor wire barriers, and other border lawsuits, are pending in federal court.
When the president “took 50 acres of Texas border property to illegally process” up to 5,000 illegal foreign nationals a day to release them into the U.S., Abbott directed the Texas National Guard “to take back our land and wire it shut,” reducing the number of illegal border crossing to an average of one a day, he said.
When the president and “‘border czar” Harris “refused to come to Texas to see the border crisis they created, I took the border to them,” Abbott said, by busing illegal border crossers to Washington, D.C. and sanctuary cities nationwide. “Those buses will continue to roll” until the border is secure, he said.
So far, Texas has bused nearly 120,000 illegal foreign nationals to six cities, according to the latest data from the governor’s office.
“I see hope on the horizon,” Abbott said, “because on November 5, Joe Biden will be fired and Donald Trump will once again become the president of the United States of America.” Trump will restore order at the border and “rid our streets of crime and chaos.”
