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Tom Handy

Abbott’s Operation Lonestar is Catching Migrants but at Whose Cost (Opinion)?

2022-07-19

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Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order requiring Texas national guard and state police officers to detain migrants who cross the Texas-Mexican border south of San Antonio and other areas. The order requires illegal aliens sent back to the port of entry at the border.

Abbott issued the order because President Biden ended Title 42. Title 42 was launched under the Trump administration as a public health order to allow officials to turn people away who are crossing the border. During the pandemic, this allowed officials to turn away asylum seekers at the border since the U.S. feared they would be overrun with people as the pandemic was going on.

Earlier this month, Democratic Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona said:

“The Biden administration was wrong to set an end date for Title 42 without a comprehensive plan in place. We need a secure, orderly, and humane response at our southern border and our bipartisan legislation holds the Biden administration accountable to that.”

Last Wednesday, Senior policy counsel of the American Immigration Council Aaron Reichlin-Melnick said:

“The use of Title 42 is an attempt to tread water in the middle of a hurricane, rather than going to shelter. We have seen how Title 42 has made the border more chaotic. It has massively increased the number of people who are crossing the border over and over and over again.”

U.S. Democratic Representative Veronic Escobar said the lifting of Title 42 and Governor Abbott’s frequent characterization of migrants as an invasion leaves her to worry about fair treatment and the potential for violence.

Escobar’s district includes El Paso and other border towns said:

“The use of migrants as a prop is nothing new, but it has gotten more dangerous. I am very concerned for communities like mine that we will see more acts of violence against immigrants, Latinos, and communities on the border because of this kind of rhetoric.”

Since Governor Abbott has used the word invasion, this has prompted other officials to use the term especially as they campaign for office.

Zachary Mueller, political director of America’s Voice said:

“We’ve identified over 120 different paid political ads from 44 different Republican campaigns in this midterm cycle, in over 330 separate tweets from the first six months of this year, across 79 different Republican campaigns, that have promoted a version of the false white replacement and invasion conspiracies.”

One Trump-backed candidate in Arizona, Kari Lake, said she would declare a border invasion if she wins.

Governor Abbott’s anti-immigrant fear-mongering is becoming normalized.

Do you think Governor Abbott is right to declare migrants an invasion?

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