Texas Governor Greg Abbott criticized President Biden’s decision to send 1,500 troops to the southern border, saying the president is sending troops to fill out paperwork and not enough to realistically secure the border.
The Republican governor appeared on “Fox News Sunday” to address the chaos at the U.S.-Mexico border ahead of the expiring pandemic-era Title 42 policies that have allowed U.S. officials to reject dozens of thousands of migrants crossing the southern border.
“Only when Biden came in and took them all out [Trump-era] policies and put out a welcome mat to the whole world that the border is now open, that suddenly we have chaos caused solely by the policies put in place by Joe Biden,” Abbott said.
The governor criticized Biden’s decision to move troops as “one day late and tens of thousands of troops too few.”
BIDEN DEFENDS SENDING TROOPS TO BORDER: ‘MORE AGENTS NEEDED’
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott criticized the Biden administration’s border policies for rolling out the “welcome mat” to the world and creating chaos at the southern border as migrants continue to arrive in the United States. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images; USA Today Network via Reuters Connect)
“President Trump sent soldiers to the border to secure the border,” Abbott said. “President Biden is sending 1,500 summonsed troops to do paperwork. That’s not going to secure the border. We need 15,000 or 150,000 to secure the border because of the open border policies of the Biden administration.”
To deal with the surge in migrants, the Biden administration is sending 1,500 active-duty troops to the US-Mexico border to perform data entry, warehouse support and other administrative tasks so that Customs and U.S. Border Protection can focus on field work, White House officials said. said
The troops “will not perform law enforcement functions or interact with immigrants or migrants,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday. “This will free up Border Patrol agents to carry out their critical law enforcement duties.”
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION APPROVES SENDING 1,500 US TROOPS TO MEXICO BORDER AS TITLE 42 ENDS TELERS: SOURCES
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas visited the Rio Grande Valley last week, saying the situation on the border was “very serious” and “very challenging,” while reiterating that “the border is not is open.”
“The border is not open, has not been open, and will not be open after May 11,” he said.
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Title 42 will expire on May 11.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
