On Thursday, Attorney General Merrick Garland threatened a federal lawsuit against the state of Texas over its use of state law enforcement to crack down on illegal immigration, the New York Post reports.
In response, Governor Greg Abbott (R-Texas) accused Garland of “jeopardizing the health and safety of Texans on a daily basis” with the Biden Administration’s refusal to enforce immigration law. The conflict emerged after Abbott signed an executive order allowing Texas State Troopers to stop and order any vehicles suspected of carrying illegal aliens to turn around at the border, effectively amounting to state-enforced deportation.
Garland claimed that the order “interferes with federal immigration enforcement,” despite the fact that the federal government under Joe Biden has been actively refusing to enforce immigration law. As a result of Biden’s campaign policies to allow as many illegals into the country as possible, deportations have plummeted while the rate of illegals coming across the border has spiked to historic highs.
Abbott responded in an additional statement saying that Garland “fundamentally misunderstands what is truly happening as the Texas-Mexico border.” Abbott pointed out that “the current crisis at our southern border, including the overcrowding of immigration facilities and the devastating spread of COVID-19 that the influx of [illegals] is causing, is entirely the creation of the Biden Administration and its failed immigration policies.”
The order signed on Wednesday gives state authorities the power to order any vehicle to stop if suspected of carrying illegals; if confirmed to have illegals inside, then the vehicle can be rerouted to either its point of origin or to a border crossing checkpoint. If the driver refuses to cooperate, then the vehicle may be impounded.
Abbott has signed several such orders in recent weeks, vowing to crack down on illegal immigration where the federal government is failing. Last week, state authorities announced that they had begun implementing one of Abbott’s initiatives to arrest illegal aliens on state charges of trespassing. Abbott’s enforcement of immigration law marks a stark contrast to Biden’s open-borders approach, as Biden had campaigned in the 2020 election on promises to give amnesty to illegals, as well as taxpayer-funded benefits such as free healthcare and free education.
Earlier this week, local authorities confirmed the severity of the threat of illegals bringing in new cases of the coronavirus. In La Joya, police officers soon discovered that an entire hotel had been rented out exclusively for COVID-positive illegal aliens by a private Catholic charity, and further discovered that federal authorities, despite having confirmed many of these illegals as being COVID-positive at the border, released them directly into the custody of the charity.