Illegal Immigration and Border Security, 88th TX Legislative Session
Summary: This week's updates include the following: U.S. Rep. Hunt to El Paso judge, "Those who want secure border aren't racist"; Texas Senate leaders signal intent to spend big on border security; Texas Republicans demand Biden reimburse state for border crisis / In July 2022, Parker County joined the call for border control by proclaiming illegal immigration an "invasion." Since then, there has been a swell of Texas counties (42) joining the call for action. In addition, “Invasion” on the Border has become part of the TX 88th Legislative Session with the filing of House Bills 184 and 1491. / Willow Park Civics will update this blog post with current news as it happens.
Latest Update: Friday, 10 February, 2023 originally posted July 2022
"Invasion" on the Border
In July 2022, Parker County joined the call for border control by proclaiming illegal immigration an "invasion." Since then, there has been a swell of Texas counties joining the call for action.
“Invasion” on the Border became part of the TX 88th Legislative Session with the filing of House Bill 184, also known as “Defend the Guard,” and HB 1491, which would create a state version of the federal Title 42 public health order.
• U.S. Rep. Hunt to El Paso judge: Those who want secure border aren't racist, The Center Square, 03 February 2023, Excerpts. Fallout continues from remarks Democratic El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego made before the House Judiciary Committee when he claimed “there is no open border in El Paso” and those advocating for a secure border were racist.
The judge made the comments after Hays County, Texas, resident Brandon Dunn testified about his son, a 15-year-old sophomore in high school, who was killed from fentanyl poisoning from drugs likely brought in through the southern border.
U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, asked Dunn if he and his wife, who is Hispanic, believes that “wanting a secure border makes one racist or anti-Hispanic.” Dunn replied, “Not in the slightest. Her family holds that same position.” He also said fathers he’s spoken to who’ve lost children to fentanyl say, “this is a border issue. It’s not an immigration issue.”
U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt, a Republican from Houston, took issue with the judge’s comments, saying he supported a secure border and as a Black man wasn’t racist.
Hunt said over five million people who’ve illegally entered the U.S. was a statistical fact and equivalent to seven congressional districts. He also said “enough fentanyl has poured through the border to kill every American five times” since Biden’s been in office, another “fact.”
Hunt said he had to respond to the judge’s remarks that no invasion was occurring at the southern border, saying, “I’m somebody who needs to look at the definition of things before we can have this conversation. According to the Oxford Dictionary, an invasion is an ‘incursion by a large number of people or things into a place or sphere of activity.’”
He said over five million people illegally entering the U.S. “constitutes a large number,” enough fentanyl pouring through the border to kill every person in America five times over constituted “things,” and both were “a direct definition of the word invasion.”
• Texas Senate leaders signal intent to spend big on border security, The Texas Tribune, 03 February 2023, Excerpts. Faulting the federal government for lax border enforcement, leaders in the Texas Senate signaled they would continue to spend significant portions of the state budget on efforts to curb immigration.
The state allocated more than $4 billion on the issue in the last two years, including $40 million in ongoing efforts to bus migrants from Texas border towns to Democrat-led cities across the country and $163 million on a state-funded border wall. Lawmakers appear eager to re-up that kind of funding.
“In our base budget, the House and the Senate [have] projected that we would continue the investment in the wall,” said Joan Huffman, a Houston Republican who leads the budget-writing Senate Finance Committee, during a hearing Friday. “The federal government does not appear to be taking this extremely serious problem seriously at all, and so the state has felt an obligation to continue with this financial commitment.”
• Texas Republicans Demand Biden Reimburse State for Border Crisis, Texas Scorecard, 30 January 2023, Excerpts. The Texas Republican delegation in the U.S. House has written to President Joe Biden, demanding that he reimburse Texas for state efforts made to attempt to secure the border and requesting a meeting to discuss ways to end the crisis.
The 25-member delegation led by U.S. Reps. August Pfluger, Pat Fallon, Jodey Arrington, Chip Roy, and Tony Gonzales says that due to the federal government’s failure to secure the border, many cities along the border are suffering.
Week ending Friday, 03 February, 2023
• Abbott names new border czar, gives update on wall construction in south Texas, Construction of border wall to cost Texas $1 billion, The Center Square, 30 January 2023, Excerpts. A new "border czar” has been named to oversee border security in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott announced on Monday, a newly retired U.S. Border Patrol agent supervisor, Mike Banks. / Abbott said he created a “Special Advisor on Border Matters” and Texas' first-ever border czar to do what he maintains the federal government has refused to do. / “Building a border wall and adding hundreds of miles of other barriers,” Abbott said, “is only one way that Texas is responding to President Biden’s refusal to enforce the immigration laws of the United States of America.”
• Abbott Appoints Border Security Czar: ‘Combating Illegal Immigration in Texas Is a Full-time Job’, The Texan, 30 January 2023, Excerpts. Banks said he is “very passionate” about border security and is “extremely humbled” to be appointed by Abbott. He added that he has spent 23 years in enforcement. / “I look forward to continuing to work with our stakeholders, our law enforcement partners in the community, and leveraging everything we can to further protect our great State of Texas and the United States,” Banks said. / Banks also said his aim is to make Texas the “least desirable place for illegal immigration.” / The governor said border wall construction costs taxpayers about $25 million per mile, depending on geography. He also said the state is continuing to seek landowners who are willing to have the wall built on portions of their property.
• Gov. Greg Abbott hires “border czar” to accelerate wall construction, The Texas Tribune, 30 January 2023, Excerpts Abbott said Mike Banks, who retired from Border Patrol 10 days ago, will work alongside the Texas National Guard, state troopers and the Texas Facilities Commission to “accelerate the building of the border wall in Texas.”
• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Appoints Border Czar, Texas Scorecard, 31 January 2023
• Abbott Backs Proposal to Create ‘Texas Title 42’ Expulsion Policy for Illegal Immigrants, The Texan, 27 January 2023, Excerpts. Gov. Greg Abbott expressed support for a bill that would create a law in Texas similar to the federal Title 42 public health order first implemented by the Trump administration./ Rep. Brian Harrison (R-Midlothian) filed House Bill (HB) 1491, [Legiscan] which would mandate screening for anyone entering Texas during a “federally declared public health emergency.”
• Abbott in letter to Biden: 'This chaos is the direct result of your failure to enforce the immigration laws that Congress enacted’, Lone Star Standard, 20 January 2023, Excerpts. The widely reported letter that Gov. Greg Abbott handed President Joe Biden during the latter's visit to Texas earlier this month told the president not to believe a sanitized version of what his immigration policies are doing to the southern border. / Abbott's single page letter referred to Biden's visit to the border on Jan. 8 as "$20 billion too little and two years too late" and avoiding "sites where mass illegal immigration occurs." Abbott also claimed Biden won't meet "the thousands of angry Texas property owners whose lives have been destroyed by your border policies" during his visit to El Paso, Texas.
"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," the letter continued. "This chaos is the direct result of your failure to enforce the immigration laws that Congress enacted."
Later in the letter, Abbott told Biden that the U.S. now suffers "the worst illegal immigration" in the nation's history.
"Your open-border policies have emboldened the cartels, who grow wealthy by trafficking deadly fentanyl and even human beings," the letter said. "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."
Near the letter's end, Abbott also outlined what Biden should do to rectify the immigration situation after "you finish the photo-ops in a carefully stage-managed version of El Paso." Abbott recommended, among other things, that Biden designate Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations, resume border wall construction, aggressively prosecute illegal entry, implement and enforce Remain-in-Mexico policy and Title 42 expulsions and stop paroling illegal immigrants en masse."
Week of Friday 27 January 2023
• 42 Texas counties now support declaring invasion at southern border, The Center Square, 18 January 2023, Excerpts. At least 42 counties have now declared an invasion or expressed support for Texas declaring an invasion at the southern border. More are in the process of making similar declarations, according to sources who’ve spoken to The Center Square.
They also cited Article IV, Section 7 of the Texas Constitution that authorizes the governor to “call forth the militia to execute the laws of the state, to suppress insurrections and to repel invasions.” Their resolution describes Mexican cartels as “paramilitary, narco-terrorist organizations that profit from trafficking people and drugs into the U.S.” who are creating a security threat and humanitarian disaster “with overwhelming consequences to residents in the State of Texas.”
They also expressed support for Gov. Greg Abbott expanding his border security mission, Operation Lone Star, to address a crisis created by the federal government’s failure to uphold its constitutional duty to “insure domestic tranquility” and “provide for the common defense,” according to the resolution.
➜ Dozens of Texas Counties Declare Illegal Immigration ‘Invasion’ as Debate Over Texas’ Role Simmers, The Texan, 02 January 2023, Excerpts. At least 40 counties in Texas reportedly passed or considered resolutions last year claiming illegal immigration is an “invasion” amid a debate over how aggressively Gov. Greg Abbott should confront the federal government over border security.
Those who support border security measures focused on deterrence often say “every county is a border county.” Counties have cited fatal drug overdoses and concerns about human trafficking as part of the basis for passing these documents, even if many of the jurisdictions in question are hundreds of miles away from the border.
“No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay,” the provision reads.
Article IV, Section 7 of the Texas Constitution addresses how the governor is to respond if the state is invaded. “He shall be Commander-in-Chief of the military forces of the State, except when they are called into actual service of the United States. He shall have power to call forth the militia to execute the laws of the State, to suppress insurrections, and to repel invasions,” the section reads.
• Legislation Filed to Protect Texas National Guard From Unconstitutional Wars, Texas Scorecard, 28 December 2022, Excerpts. State Rep. Bryan Slaton (R–Royse City) has once again filed legislation to “protect the Texas National Guard from being deployed into active combat duty in unconstitutional wars.” House Bill 184, [Legiscan] also known as “Defend the Guard,” would require Congress to follow Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution and formally declare war before the Texas National Guard can be deployed. Slaton filed similar legislation in 2021, though it did not pass. / “The Constitution clearly requires that Congress actually declare war before our fighting men and women are sent to fight for our country. Congress has failed in their duty in this regard for nearly 80 years. It is time to stand up for and protect our Texas National Guard and the U.S. Constitution.”
• Texas GOP Congressional Delegation Unveils Border Security Framework, Texas Scorecard, 08 December 2022, Excerpts - Members of the Texas GOP congressional delegation have announced a border security framework “by Texans for Texans” to address the needs of the state amid the ongoing border invasion. / As millions pour across the Texas-Mexico border and are released into the United States, Texas is spending billions in an attempt to slow the oncoming traffic. / In response to the crisis, Texas’ representatives to Washington, D.C., are committing to completing the physical border infrastructure, fixing border enforcement policies, enforcing laws within the interior, and targeting the cartel and criminal organizations flooding the U.S. with drugs. / All but one of Texas’ 26 Republican congressional representatives have signed onto this border security framework.
• Cornyn Questions Labeling Illegal Immigration ‘Invasion,’ per Report, The Texan, 19 December 2022, Excerpts. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) diverged with many of his Republican colleagues last week when he questioned the characterization of illegal immigration as an “invasion.” / Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton have repeatedly called illegal immigration an “invasion,” as well as other Republican elected officials. / Abbott even cited portions of the state and federal constitutions that allow states to respond to invasions in the federal government’s absence. The governor has not ordered state police and National Guardsmen to deport illegal aliens as some have called for him to do, but he has ordered that they be returned to the border to be arrested by federal authorities.
• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott invokes constitutional 'invasion clause' amid immigration crisis, FoxNews, 15 November 2022, Abbott plans to activate both National Guard and Texas Department of Public Safety personnel to arrest and return illegal immigrants to border
• A growing number of Texas rural counties are declaring local immigration “disasters,” The Texas Tribune, 01 December 2022, Excerpts - The latest county to make a disaster declaration is an eight-hour drive away from the Texas-Mexico border, but local officials there say they’re under “invasion.” More than 500 miles separate Hopkins County from the Texas-Mexico border. The distance did not stop the county commissioners from declaring a “local state of disaster” caused by an “invasion” of immigrants.
Hopkins County Judge Robert Newsom signed the resolution in mid-November at a county commissioner’s meeting in Sulphur Springs, 90 miles northeast of Dallas. Hopkins County is the latest to speak out about the situation at the border.
Kinney County, a border county tucked between the cities of Del Rio and Eagle Pass, was the first to declare a state of disaster, in April 2021, because of the “thousands of illegal aliens invading” Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott followed issuing his own broader disaster declaration the next month, which gave him the authority to use emergency powers usually reserved for natural disasters such as hurricanes or floods. That declaration helped Abbott funnel billions of dollars into his border initiative, Operation Lone Star.
• Texas GOP leadership formally declares Texas is being invaded, The Center Square, 07 October 2022The executive leadership of the Republican Party of Texas has formally declared an invasion at the Texas southern border.
It’s also calling on Gov. Greg Abbott to do what no governor of Texas has ever done before: declare an invasion and protect Texas and Americans from what it says are transnational criminal organizations creating an imminent threat to their lives. The resolution states that during World War II, allied forces totaling about 156,000 landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, on D-Day, June 6, 1944. By comparison, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the number of foreign nationals who’ve illegally entered the U.S. in Texas is equivalent to the number of allied D-Day forces entering every month for the past 18 months.
• 33 Texas counties declare invasion at southern border, more expected to follow, The Center Square, 05 October, Number of "gotaways" in McMullen County in one month is seven times greater than its population
• States Deploy About 2,500 National Guard Troops to U.S.-Mexico Border, The Foreign Desk,04 October 2022,
• Abbott: Biden sending National Guard to border is hypocritical, The Center Square, 03 October 2022
• 3 more counties want Texas to declare invasion at southern border; total at 32, The Center Square, 30 September, 2022
• Beijing Has Little Incentive to Curb Flow of Fentanyl to U.S., Mexico, The Foreign Desk, 23 September 2022, Excerpt. Past administrations had pressured the Chinese government to clamp down on the production of the highly refined fentanyl favored by Mexican drug cartels.
“The Obama and Trump administrations devoted significant diplomatic capital to persuading Beijing to crack down on the supply of fentanyl from China to the United States. In April 2019, China finally announced that the production, sale, and export of all fentanyl-class drugs would be prohibited, except by authorized firms which the Chinese government has granted special licenses,” Singleton added.
But an unintended consequence of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s August trip to Taiwan was that Beijing suspended cooperation with Washington on transnational crime and illegal drug issues.
• Abbott Declares Mexican Drug Cartels Terrorists, Calls on Biden to Do the Same The Foreign News Desk, 22 September, Excerpts - Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday issued an executive order officially designating certain Mexican drug cartels as foreign smuggled into the U.S. to kill Americans at an alarming rate.
In one year’s time, fentanyl killed nearly 20 times more people than those killed in terrorist attacks over decades. “Fentanyl is a clandestine killer, and Texans are falling victim to the Mexican cartels that are producing it,” Abbott said. “Cartels are terrorists, and it’s time we treated them that way. In fact, more Americans died from fentanyl poisoning in the past year than all terrorist attacks across the globe in the past 100 years. In order to save our country, particularly our next generation, we must do more to get fentanyl off our streets.”
• Texas ramping up efforts to fight fentanyl crisis impacting communities, The Center Square, 21 September 2022, Excerpts - Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has instructed state agency heads to “look for ways to enhance all aspects of the state’s response to” the fentanyl crisis, including creating public service announcements, posting flyers in prominent locations around regulated facilities, training staff, or providing educational opportunities.
They’ve also been instructed to prepare “to outline statutory changes, budget priorities, and other initiatives that will enhance the state’s ability to interdict this dangerous drug, provide emergency overdose treatment, and expand substance abuse treatment programs” ahead of the 2023 legislative session and to coordinate their efforts with the Texas Opioid Abatement Fund Council.
• Texas conservatives laud Abbott declaring Mexican cartels foreign terrorist organizations, argue next step is to declare an invasion, The Center Square, 21 September 2022
• Massive Fentanyl Seizure in Tarrant County, Willow Park Civics Blog, 15 September 2022
• Two more counties declare invasion at southern border, bringing total to 29, The Center Square, 15 September 2022, Excerpts - The judges and county commissioners of Wharton and Burnet counties this week signed resolutions calling for “additional measures to secure the border, stop the invasion at the border, and protect our communities.”
• Five more Texas counties declare invasion at southern border, bringing total to 27, The Center Square, 14 September 2022, Excerpts - The judges and commissioners of five more Texas counties have declared an invasion at the southern border, bringing the total to 27. Clay, Jack, Hood, Hunt and Montague counties are the latest to declare an invasion.
• Four more Texas counties declare invasion at southern border, bringing total to 22, The Center Square, 13 September 2022, Excerpts - The judges and commissioners of four more Texas counties have declared an invasion at the southern border, bringing to 22 the number of counties that have done so. Jasper, Madison, Throckmorton and Wichita counties are the latest to declare an invasion.
• Urgency Grows: Texas Counties Continue Declaring Invasions, Texas Scorecard, 13 September 2022, Excerpts - Just last week, former U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan told Texans that although Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton have done more than any other governor or attorney general, Operation Lone Star has been in place for 16 months and the border crisis has only gotten worse. “Here’s why: Resources aren’t the answer,” said Morgan. “Policy. That’s it.”
• Ellis County Passes Resolution Calling on Abbott to ‘Remove All Persons’ Crossing Border Illegally, 25 August 2022, The Texan, Excerpts - Ellis County explicitly urged Gov. Greg Abbott to “remove all persons trespassing as well as invading the sovereignty” of the state and U.S. Many other counties have passed documents calling for a statewide “invasion” declaration or supporting border security efforts through Operation Lone Star, including Parker, Goliad, Wise, Tyler, Atascosa, Terrell, Kinney, Uvalde, Burnet, and Medina.
• Republican-led County Rejects Border Invasion Declaration, Texas Scorecard, 31 August 2022, Excepts - As President Joe Biden’s open border crisis continues, five more counties across Texas passed declarations of invasion last week—but one Republican county refused. Hood County, located southwest of Fort Worth... [Editorial Note: By 14 September, Hood County commissioners changed their minds and joined the "invasion proclamation."]
• Invasion' declaration condemned by national, local groups, 24 August 2022, Weatherford Democrat
• Parker Co. Illegal Immigration, Willow Park Civics Blog, 02 August 2022
• Parker County Commissioners Pass Disaster Proclamation Calling Illegal Immigration ‘Invasion,’ 27 July 2022, The Texan
Excerpt: The Parker County Commissioners Court unanimously approved a proclamation of a state of disaster calling illegal immigration an “invasion,” becoming the latest in a series of counties that have made similar declarations.
Parker County Sheriff Russ Authier told commissioners during their regular meeting on Monday that the uptick in fentanyl overdoses is linked to illegal immigration.
“I think we all know the border is a mess,” Authier said. “We see different aspects of it other than our partners who are on the border seeing the human side of the smuggling, trafficking of people. A lot of what we’re seeing here is the drug smuggling.”
Willow Park Civics Research
The U.S. state of Texas is divided into 254 counties, more than any other U.S. state.[1] Over 20% of Texas counties are generally located within the Houston-Dallas—San Antonio—Austin areas, serving about 20,000,000 people, the majority of the state's population. Wikipedia
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