PHARR, Texas – With the Rio Grande and an unfinished wall for a backdrop, Donald Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott joined forces Wednesday to amplify claims of chaos at the border since President Joe Biden took over.
“It is time to make sure we seal this border and close it down,” Abbott declared, adopting some of the toughest Trumpian rhetoric of his career in depicting migrants —all migrants — as a security threat. “The people coming across the border are cartels and gangs and smugglers and human traffickers.”
Trump, he said, “did more than any other president has ever done to secure our border,” and Biden in five months has left Americans all but undefended, forcing Texas to fill the vacuum by tapping the state budget to send state troopers and guardsmen and continue the wall Trump started. “Look at this border. ... You see an unfinished border. This is Biden’s fault.”
Migration has hit levels not seen in two decades. For an ex-president seeking a comeback and an ally who needs Trump’s base to win a third term next year, the rusting and incomplete section of Trump’s wall in Pharr offered a potent venue for a rally-style joint appearance.
“We have a sick country in many ways. It’s sick in elections, and it’s sick at the border,” Trump said earlier in a rambling discourse at a border security briefing, shifting quickly from his affection for Abbott to border security to “Russia, Russia, Russia” and Hillary Clinton, then back to reminiscing about the border wall design process with a detour on the New York mayor’s race.
Trump insisted that fentanyl was “almost a nonfactor” during his presidency “and now I hear it’s just pouring into our country” — a perplexing claim, given that he routinely cited fentanyl smuggling to justify spending on the border wall, as he did in an Oval Office address to the nation on Jan. 8, 2019, aimed at pressuring Congress to fund the project: “Our southern border is a pipeline for vast quantities of illegal drugs, including meth, heroin, cocaine and fentanyl.”
Trump managed to build 450 miles of wall during his presidency, the last few dozen ordered in a hurry after his defeat. Biden halted construction and returned $2 billion that Trump had siphoned from the Pentagon budget.
“Biden is destroying our country. And it all started with a fake election,” Trump said at the wall, where some fans shouted “Trump won!”
Afterward, CNN’s Jim Acosta tried to shout a question, asking whether Trump would apologize for the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Trump ignored it as the crowd booed.
Two weeks ago Abbott, facing primary challenges from the right, announced that Texas will continue the wall, starting with $250 million shifted from the state prison budget.
Trump and Abbott join a parade of Republicans who have the border around McAllen to promote their complaints about Biden’s policies. After a briefing in Weslaco at the Texas Department of Public Safety, they headed to Pharr, across the river from Reynosa, site of a cartel bloodbath two weeks ago that left 19 people dead, all but four of them innocent bystanders. Hardly any of that violence has spilled into the United States.
In March the governor announced that he would deploy more state police and national guard to the border under Operation Lone Star, insisting that Biden was neglecting a spiraling security crisis. On May 31 he issued a disaster declaration in 34 counties. In June, he announced the state-built border wall and invited private donations.
“It’s unconscionable that the governor is wasting attention and resources to stir hate rather than focus on the urgent issues, such as fixing the state’s power grid,” said Juanita Valdez-Cox, executive director of La Unión del Pueblo Entero.
The group, which advocates for border communities, held a rally hours before Trump and Abbott arrived, in San Juan just east of McAllen, with Texas Democratic Party chairman Gilberto Hinojosa of nearby Brownsville, a former Cameron County judge.
“Trump … brought racism and hate to a fever pitch, and sold us out to pander to his extreme-right base,” said Hinojosa. As for Abbott, he said, he’s “busy promoting Trump’s pet project” and using border residents as “props for his political theater” instead of fixing a statewide power grid whose failure during a winter storm in February cost an estimated 700 lives.
Last Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris visited the border for the first time since her inauguration at El Paso, a choice that Trump mocked.
“We’re going to the real part of the border where there’s real problems, not a part where you look around and you don’t see anybody,” he said.
The migrant surge is far less acute in El Paso than in Hidalgo and Starr counties, which are 800 miles closer to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, where Biden assigned Harris to focus on “root causes” of migration: poverty, corruption and violence.
“They’re missing the point,” Abbott asserted during the briefing in Weslaco, flanked by Trump and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. “There’s one place to solve all the problems on the border, and that is on the border.”
More than 30 Republican members of the U.S. House, including a dozen Texans, flew to South Texas to show solidarity. Trump name-checked them all, and took swipes at absent adversaries such as Rep. Liz Cheney, whose support for his impeachment cost her a leadership post.
Stephen Miller, architect of Trump’s immigration policies, was there, along with Plano’s Chad Wolf, who served temporarily as Trump’s homeland security chief.
The deterioration of security since Biden took office has been “amazing and disastrous,” Abbott asserted, lauding Trump’s approach. “He secured our border and he kept Texas and America safe.”
Looking directly into the camera, Abbott — who may be angling for a 2024 presidential run — touted the steps he’s taken to tighten border security, warning voters around the country that “what comes across the border does not stay at the border. In fact it goes to your states.”
Trump dominated the briefing, consuming nearly half of the 36 minute.
“We won in a landslide, it wasn’t even close,” Trump insisted, referring to a 5.6-point victory in Texas that was tighter than his 9-point win four years earlier, and the third worst showing for a GOP nominee since 1976.
“There’s my doctor over there,” he said, giving a shoutout to freshman Rep. Ronny Jackson of Amarillo, who as White House physician vouched for Trump’s mental acuity and now says Biden should take the same cognitive test to rule out dementia. “I’d like to see Biden ace it. He wouldn’t ace it.”
Along Highway 83 in the Valley, it’s easy to spot state police and Border Patrol, though the area has one the country’s lowest crime rates.
But the governor’s $1 billion state investment in border security and effort to crowdsource border wall construction has also faced pushback.
The Rio Grande Valley’s four biggest counties have refused Abbott’s demand to issue local disaster declarations, as have El Paso and Webb, which includes Laredo. On Monday, he dropped them from his disaster order because of the resistance.
In Hidalgo County, whose largest city is McAllen, county Judge Richard Cortez said last week that there’s not “sufficient evidence” to justify a disaster declaration.
Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño Jr., who also chairs the Texas Border Coalition, echoed widespread concern in the Valley about Abbott’s plans. Fencing makes sense at ports of entry, he said, but not everywhere. “Improved border security demands a comprehensive plan” that addresses root causes, he said, as the Biden administration has been doing in Central America.
Expulsions persist
For Trump, still refusing to accept his defeat, the wall remains a top selling point as he maneuvers to keep his grip on the GOP.
After the border visit, he was scheduled to tape a Fox News town hall with Sean Hannity that will air Wednesday night.
He has endorsed Abbott for a third term and lavished praise on him, even flattering Abbott with the fanciful claim that he’s enjoying a 92% approval rating. It’s actually less than half that: 44% in a poll released Sunday by the University of Texas and Texas Tribune. Even among Texas Republicans, Abbott’s approval is only 77%.
The governor did not step in to correct him.
“While Trump may be out of the White House, it is clear that Republican sycophants like our own Greg Abbott are willing to do whatever it takes to win over this man’s approval,” including promoting an “archaic” border wall, Fort Worth Rep. Marc Veasey wrote supporters by email – one of many donor appeals from candidates and committees from both parties capitalizing on the spectacle.
Although Trump says Biden has created an “open border,” he has yet to scrap many Trump-era measures, to the dismay of immigrant advocates.
Biden has not reversed the “remain in Mexico” policy that bars asylum seekers from entering the United States until their claims are adjudicated.
And he has kept in place another Trump-era asylum tourniquet: Title 42.
Even before the pandemic, Miller had suggested invoking the obscure provision of public health law that can be used to bar and quickly expel migrants. Trump did so in March 2020 at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, the Border Patrol has used it some 845,000 times. Migrants are turned back so quickly under Title 42 that about 40% almost immediately try again, far higher than the 7% recidivism rate in 2019.
“These people try over and over again,” said Terrence Garrett, a political scientist at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
Biden could roll back Title 42 as soon as July 31. As the pandemic eases and vaccination rates climb, the public health justification is fading.
He did carve out one exception, ending expulsion of children traveling without an adult. Trump and other critics view that as a signal that migrants are welcome, though Biden has publicly urged would-be migrants to avoid the dangerous and costly trek. Harris emphasized that message during a trip to Guatemala and Mexico a few weeks ago, warning that people caught crossing the border will be turned back.
But as the economy has roared back from the lockdowns of last summer and fall, pent-up demand among impoverished job-seekers has erupted.
Even so, said Rep. Filemon Vela, D-Brownsville, a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, “The border is not a war zone, and the wall Abbott and Trump are trying to get Texans to pay for is not only a waste of their hard-earned money but also an un-American symbol of hatred.”
In May, federal authorities counted about 180,000 “border encounters” – a 20-year monthly high.
The spike was a focus of the briefing Trump and Abbott received from two sheriffs and the director of the Texas DPS, Steven McCraw.
“You can’t have public safety unless you have border security,” McCraw said. “If you have a drug problem anywhere in the country, you have a border problem. It’s cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl and heroin.”
Sheriff Benny Martinez of rural Brooks County, population 7,200 and 70 miles away, said his officers are overwhelmed chasing illegal immigrants, and finding far more dead migrants than before Trump left office.
Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn from Fort Worth, a 7-hour drive north, reiterated concerns he’d raised with Trump at the White House about drug smuggling and the impacts far from the border. Notably, he did not assert that the problem started or escalated since Trump left office.
Trump interrupted to ask if fentanyl is coming from China, a favorite punching bag throughout the day.
“No sir, it’s coming in from the cartels,” said Waybourn, suggesting that the “the drug cartels in Mexico should be the number one enemy of American law enforcement, plain and simple.”
Abbott and others emphasized the spike in apprehensions, but those figures are inflated by repeat crossing attempts, as Customs and Border Protection has acknowledged.
“There is no emergency here,” said Garrett. “There is a humanitarian crisis in the sense that the U.S. is not allowing people to make an asylum claim.”
But at the Weslaco DPS, conservative radio host Sergio Sanchez, a former county GOP chairman, lauded Abbott and Trump for shining a light on “this continuing border fiasco.”
A “controlled migration system” is needed, he said, but “nothing ever gets done.”
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(Dallas Morning News staff writer Dianne Solis reported from the Rio Grande Valley. Washington Bureau Chief Todd J. Gillman reported from Washington.
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