A new Center for Immigration Studies video report highlights Texas Governor Abbott’s “Operation Hold the Line”, which has state police and National Guard block immigrants at the Rio Grande River’s edge, and President Biden’s undermining of the state’s efforts to enforce the laws.
Todd Bensman, the Center for Immigration Studies’ senior national security fellow, captures the border war, showing many of the initiatives undertaken by the state in and around Eagle Pass, Texas, a hot spot for illegal immigrant crossings. Bensman speaks with several illegal immigrants who successfully entered the country and with others who were discouraged and returned to Mexico. They told Bensman of their plans to go around the Texas border blockade and to search for U.S. Border Patrol officers, who the migrants feel are certain to admit them into the U.S.
Bensman explains, “None of these immigrants are really giving up, because they all know full well there’s an antidote, a solution, to this Texas halt-and-block operation – it is President Joe Biden’s Border Patrol. The immigrants know that if they can bust the Texas blockade and link up with Biden’s Border Patrol agents, they will be escorted in right past Texas’s fortifications.”
AND HEAR:
Parsing Immigration Policy, Episode 114: Bensman and Mark Krikorian Discuss the Issue
Conflict has erupted at the Texas-Mexico border between two different arms of law enforcement – Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). CBP has been instructed by the Biden administration to bring migrants they encounter into the country, after which they are released with a notice to appear, and then put on a bus to an American city of their choosing, essentially assisting migrants in their illegal entry into the U.S. Texas DPS has taken border enforcement into its own hands, physically blocking migrants from entering along the Mexican border with Texas and arresting illegal migrants for trespassing when they cross.
To discuss this “border cold war”, Todd Bensman, the Center for Immigration Studies’ Texas-based senior national security fellow, joins this week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy. He shares what he saw firsthand during his visit to Eagle Pass, Texas and the cross-border town of Piedras Negras, Mexico. Bensman explains that migrants will call out to Border Patrol for assistance when stopped by Texas DPS, as they are almost guaranteed entry to the U.S. once in CBP custody. Bensman points out the irony of the situation – “Not so long ago, immigrants trying to cross illegally would hide from the Border Patrol, but now they’re sort of like the saviors.”
In his closing commentary, Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center and host of Parsing Immigration Policy, discusses a British government plan, that is on its way to becoming law, to deter illegal asylum seekers. Similar in many ways to Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy, the Illegal Immigration Bill would ensure that illegal immigrants could not use asylum as a pretext for entering the country. Instead of being released in Britain, they would be sent to Rwanda to apply for asylum where they could settle or sent to another safe third country.
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NY Post: Texas vs. Biden — state fights to enforce border, as White House waves in illegal migrants
This is where Gov. Greg Abbott has taken his most muscular stand yet to break a historic mass migration event. Texas has greatly extended Operation Hold the Line, which since May has state police and National Guard block immigrants at the river’s edge.
Daily Mail: Border Crisis Sparking American Civil War
This is nothing short of an absurd civil war of sorts pitting two American forces, one controlled by Texas and the other by Washington D.C., against each other. And it all but guarantees that neither fully succeeds nor fails.