Austin, Texas (AP) – Promises to build a wall. Descriptions of American homes that have been “raided” by immigrants and traces of “genocide”. Plans to arrest cross-border workers and send them to prison.
Not a 2016 Donald Trump. This is Greg Abbott, Texas Governor in 2021.
Ambitious Republicans are the first in a group of GOP governors to raise the former president’s suspension for tough immigration policies.
In the past few weeks Abbott has developed rigorous plans and rhetoric unprecedented even in Texas, where Republicans have spent a decade putting border security at the center of their agendas. Abbott was a presidential candidate in 2024, pledging to continue building the Trump border wall and adopting the questionable methods of crowdsourcing and advertising.
Abbott’s new impulse is called political drama, and he turned it down because there are still many people crossing the border. But it gets Trump’s attention. The former president will travel to the US-Mexico border for the first time since leaving the White House in January. He will perform with Abbott on Wednesday, and other Texas Republicans are expected to join.
Movements by Abbott and other Republican governors, including those who may have ambitions for 2024, are a sign of how Trump’s immigration policy extends beyond the presidency.
Republican leaders hoping for the party’s future are aggressive, compounded by 2020 results, which suggest Trump’s tact did not drive out Latin voters, as some Democrats had predicted. We continue to see support for traditional border measures as the political winners.
There is evidence that Republican pressure is working. After weeks of criticism for not visiting the border, Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to El Paso on Friday.
“It’s a solid topic for the governor from a Republican audience perspective,” said Texas Republican strategist Matt Langston. “It’s about paying dividends to Governor Abbott.”
The persecution isn’t limited to Abbott.
Another presidential candidate, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, was the first governor to announce last week that he would deploy law enforcement at the 2,000-mile line from his state to Mexico. The commitment is unclear.
Since Democrat Joe Biden took office, Abbott has sought to position America’s largest Republican-led state as the number one opponent of federal border policy. He suggested in the spring with no evidence that COVID-19 immigrants are putting Texans at risk due to Biden’s easing of Trump-era immigration policies. Abbott began closing more than 50 shelters in June that house thousands of migrant children.
His intention to resume one of Trump’s most famous and imperfect promises – building more walls – was borrowed from Texas in a decade of spending and expansion on the Mexican border. It’s a step I didn’t have. According to Abbott, Texas will put the state’s $ 250 million in new barriers through crowdsourcing, website installation, mailbox installation, and so on so that project backers can donate their money. Start with that. According to his office, the project has raised more than $ 459,000 to date, but no donor numbers have been reported.
The latest high-profile crowdsourcing attempt to build a wall was spearheaded by Trump supporters and Steve Bannon, a former chief strategist for the president who was later charged with defrauding thousands of donors for the project. it was done. Trump pardoned Bannon on his last day in the office.
The promise of a new barrier is included in the plans for Texas soldiers to arrest cross-border commuters and have them jailed for state crimes such as trespassing. Abbott said that “homes were robbed” along the border. Abbott said landowners have lost livestock and crops due to “genocide caused by cross-border people”.
US Customs and Border Protection registered more than 180,000 encounters at the Mexican border in May since March 2000. ..
Nearly 19,000 unaccompanied children were picked up along the border in March, the highest month ever. April was the second highest and May the third highest.
Abbott dismissed criticism that his actions were merely a shame.
“Anyone who thinks this is politics has no idea what’s going on at the border,” Abbott told the Texas Capitol last week. “Anyone who thinks this is politics doesn’t care about Americans or Texas residents.”
Immigration was a weakness for Biden.
A poll by the Associated Press-NORC Public Relations and Research Center in May found that 43% of Americans supported the topic and 54% disagreed. Republicans across the United States have picked up on discontent, saying that even Republican governors in Idaho and Nebraska would send small numbers of state law enforcement officers to the border.
Last year Trump carried out a dramatic invasion of Latin American voters along the Texas border. The border with Texas, long home to the Democratic Party, is more socially conservative than the state’s liberal metropolis. The Rio Grande Valley in Texas was an important background in Trump’s immigration policy, but the building of the wall and the occupation of the border guards also created jobs.
Some Democrats and immigrant rights groups have not yet filed lawsuits in court, but have questioned the legality of Abbott’s plans. Texas border democrat Vicente Gonzalez said he needed a solution to slow down the number of immigrants, but not the ones Abbott wanted. He said the wall never worked and Abbott should invest in technology like cameras and sensors.
“He thinks it’s terribly wrong,” he said. “He may be speaking to audiences across the country, but obviously it doesn’t represent the majority of the people in Texas.”
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Associated Press Writers Anita Snow from Phoenix and Adrina Gomez Recon from Miami contributed to this report.
Texas Abbott leads Republican push for Trump-style border measures – WJET / WFXP / YourErie.com
Source link Texas Abbott leads Republican push for Trump-style border measures – WJET / WFXP / YourErie.com