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Service Quality and Reputation
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These sanctuary governors and mayors are arguing the wrong point. It is not so much about where to house these people and re-shipping them to other locations, but rather the scandal should be to tell the entire illegal immigrant operation that there is nothing in America to come to that is better than what they left. Consider just how much money these people spend to come here and the deadly traveling just to get beyond our borders. Are these people coming to anything better in the long term than what they left? Do they really want to work in slaughter houses, work farms in disgusting living conditions? Do they really want to be trafficked in the sex trade industry?
Ah, but read on to see a Chicago police station and consider how it is in expensive hotels across the country where we have no idea of their names, ages or even their history, no visas, no passports and no documents at all. How can law enforcement even begin to deal with this considering all the other existing crime across the country….
New footage shows a Chicago police station filled with mattresses and dozens of illegal migrants, as the city struggles to house the hundreds of border crossers arriving there each day.
Officials in Chicago have said they cannot afford to rent hotel rooms for the more than 8,000 migrants who have arrived in their city and have pushed for more federal funds to cover costs.
Due to the lack of available shelters, some migrants have turned to police stations for a safe place to sleep.
The migrant-housing crisis in Chicago follows last week’s end to the Trump-era COVID-19 border restriction known as Title 42, which allowed U.S. authorities to send migrants back to Mexico without giving them a chance to seek asylum.
Tens of thousands of people hurried to cross the border illegally into the U.S. before President Joe Biden implemented a strict new asylum policy to replace Title 42.
In the shocking footage posted by photojournalist Rebecca Brannon, dozens and dozens of migrants are seen sitting on and around mattresses in a Chicago police station.
Brannon reported that many of the migrants have slept and eaten on the floors, which has placed a strain on the law enforcement officers whose day-to-day jobs have been made more difficult by their presence.
Small children were seen running around and an alley sits full of trash produced by the migrants.
Chicago already has a serious violent crime problem, with its new influx of migrants likely to further strain budgets desperately-needed to try and make the city safer.
More than 8,000 migrants have arrived in Chicago since August, which is when southern states started to bus asylum seekers north. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sent migrants to the Democrat-led cities to help ease the burden on border towns.
‘To provide much-needed relief to our overrun border communities, Texas began busing migrants to sanctuary cities such as your ‘Welcoming City,’ along with Washington, DC, New York City, and Philadelphia, with more to come. Until Biden secures the border to stop the inflow of mass migration, Texas will continue this necessary program,’ Abbott noted in a letter earlier this month.
Migrants been sent to cities such as Chicago, Philadelphia and New York. Migrants have also arrived in Washington, DC, with buses stopping outside the home of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Despite the Chicago’s obvious overcrowding issue, new Mayor Brandon Johnson, a progressive Democrat who assumed office Monday, said in his inauguration speech that in Chicago, ‘there’s enough room for everyone.’
Johnson’s affirmed commitment to welcoming migrants to Chicago follows his predecessor – Lori Lightfoot’s decision to declare a state of emergency earlier this month, calling migrant arrivals a ‘humanitarian crisis’ and pushing for increased federal aid.
Chicago officials have said they expect a $53 million shortfall without additional aid because of the cost from housing migrants.
‘We’re in May, and we haven’t received any funding from FEMA,’ Chicago budget director Susie Park recently told the City Council, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. ‘The need is great. A lot of requests are coming in. New York is probably asking for $1 billion. There is a lot of need.’
Those dying from Fentanyl are not drug addicts, rather they are dying because they think they may be taking regular over the counter medication or simply eating candy. They are being poisoned. This White House has proven it does not care but the Drug Enforcement Agency DOES care.
Do you ever hear from the FBI that reports from the Southern border? How about U.S. Southern Command? How about Space Command? Yes, Space Command….
“We can use our space detection capabilities, optical cameras,” Croft told NBC 6. “We can track things within a couple of hours and see things moving.”
That includes being able to see what’s happening in places like Colombia and Venezuela, where intelligence experts fear drug traffickers and terrorist groups will join forces.
Around the clock, space and intelligence experts are sharing what they find.
Inside a room at Southern Command, there is a big screen that shows where the satellites are located. There is also a host of workstations where space experts can explain what they are seeing to representatives from the military and federal agencies.
“Space Command can provide a perspective to be able to identify and find some of these folks, the ways that they communicate, the ways they move,” said Lt. Col. Bobby Schmitt, who is with the U.S. Space Force and is assigned to coordinate what happens in orbit with Croft’s team. “Space Command provides the ability to see down and find these folks.” More here.
DEA Announces Results of Enforcement Surge to Reduce the Fentanyl Supply Across the United States
As part of the One Pill Can Kill initiative, the DEA and its law enforcement partners seized more than 10.2 million fentanyl pills and approximately 980 pounds of fentanyl powder during the period of May 23 through Sept. 8, 2022. The amount of fentanyl taken off the streets during this surge is equivalent to more than 36 million lethal doses removed from the illegal drug supply. Additionally, 338 weapons were seized, including rifles, shotguns, pistols, and hand grenades.
Every adult across the country should be talking about this and every school regardless of age should be taking all precautions.
As part of the One Pill Can Kill initiative, the DEA and its law enforcement partners seized more than 10.2 million fentanyl pills and approximately 980 pounds of fentanyl powder during the period of May 23 through Sept. 8, 2022. The amount of fentanyl taken off the streets during this surge is equivalent to more than 36 million lethal doses removed from the illegal drug supply. Additionally, 338 weapons were seized, including rifles, shotguns, pistols, and hand grenades.
Of the 390 cases investigated during this period, 51 cases are linked to overdose poisonings and 35 cases link directly to one or both of the primary Mexican cartels responsible for the majority of fentanyl in the United States – the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). In addition, 129 investigations are linked to social media platforms, including Snapchat, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and TikTok. These results build upon the One Pill Can Kill Phase II
results announced by DEA Administrator Anne Milgram in December 2021.
“Across the country, fentanyl is devastating families and communities, and we know that violent, criminal drug cartels bear responsibility for this crisis,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “The Justice Department, including the extraordinary professionals of the DEA, is working to disrupt and dismantle the operations of these cartels, remove deadly fentanyl from our communities, and save Americans’ lives.”
“For the past year, confronting the fentanyl crisis has been the top priority for DEA. The most urgent threat to our communities, our kids, and our families are the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG who are mass producing and supplying the fentanyl that is poisoning and killing Americans,” said DEA Administrator Anne Milgram. “The Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG are ruthless, criminal organizations that use deception and treachery to drive addiction with complete disregard for human life. To save American lives, the DEA is relentlessly focused on defeating the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG by degrading their operations to make it impossible for them to do business.”
Fentanyl remains the deadliest drug threat facing this nation. In 2021, a record number of Americans – 107,622 – died from a drug poisoning or overdose. Sixty-six percent of those deaths can be attributed to synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.
. Rainbow fentanyl was first reported to DEA in February 2022, and it has now been seized in 21 states.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50 times more potent than heroin. Just two milligrams of fentanyl, or the amount that could fit on the tip of a pencil, is considered a potentially lethal dose.
As part of DEA’s ongoing efforts to educate the public and encourage parents and caregivers to talk to teens and young adults about the dangers of fake pills and illicit drugs, DEA has also created a new resource, “What Every Parent and Caregiver Needs to Know About Fake Pills.”
In September 2021, DEA launched the One Pill Can Kill enforcement effort and public awareness campaign to combat the fake pill threat and educate the public about the dangers of fentanyl pills being disguised and sold as prescription medications, despite these pills not containing any of the actual medications advertised. The only safe medications are ones prescribed by a trusted medical professional and dispensed by a licensed pharmacist. All other pills are unsafe and potentially deadly.
Additional resources for parents and the community can be found on DEA’s Fentanyl Awareness page.
“There is a reason that I have called Cass Sunstein the most dangerous man in America,” Glenn said on radio this morning.
ProgressivesToday.com, the website co-founded by Kyle Olsen, the co-author of Glenn’s latest book Conform: Exposing the Truth About Common Core and Public Education, was the first to draw attention to the spooky article from the Nudge author.
Sunstein begins the article wondering what would happen if a government began a program with the explicit goal of indoctrination students:
Suppose that an authoritarian government decides to embark on a program of curricular reform, with the explicit goal of indoctrinating the nation’s high school students. Suppose that it wants to change the curriculum to teach students that their government is good and trustworthy, that their system is democratic and committed to the rule of law, and that free markets are a big problem.
Will such a government succeed? Or will high school students simply roll their eyes?
Questions of this kind have long been debated, but without the benefit of reliable evidence. New research, from Davide Cantoni of the University of Munich and several co-authors, shows that recent curricular reforms in China, explicitly designed to transform students’ political views, have mostly worked. The findings offer remarkable evidence about the potential influence of the high school curriculum on what students end up thinking — and they give us some important insights into contemporary China as well.
He goes on to explain that the indoctrination program began in 2001 when the country made “significant changes in the textbooks used by students in grades 10, 11 and 12.” Ultimately, Sunstein questions whether such a program could produce similar outcomes in a non-authoritarian country.
At the time, Sunstein was the regulatory czar…now….today he is at DHS and in charge of destroying the sovereignty of the United States as the real border czar. Obviously more dangerous today for reasons too long to list but certainly Biden has accepted the Sunstein doctrine to collapse control of immigration.
Harvard’s Sunstein Joins Biden’s DHS to Shape Immigration Rules
Progressive groups had raised concern about Sunstein’s record
His wife is Biden nominee for international development agency
In part:
Former Obama administration official Cass Sunstein on Monday joined the Department of Homeland Security, where President Joe Biden is moving rapidly to roll back Donald Trump’s immigration policy priorities.
Sunstein is a senior counselor who will be responsible for making sure that the rules put forward by the department and its agencies are based on evidence and consistent with the law, an administration official said.
In 2018, Sunstein received the Holberg Prize, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for law and the humanities, from Norway’s government. He also worked in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during the Carter and Reagan administrations.
Sunstein’s wife, Samantha Power, is Biden’s nominee for administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Power’s financial disclosures showed Sunstein earning consulting fees from Apple Inc. and Global Asset Capital LLC, as well as advisory fees and stock options from Humu Inc. He also reported royalties from dozens of book publications. More here.
The impasse over President Joe Biden’s immigration wish list on Capitol Hill has increased pressure on a Department of Homeland Security official working to overhaul the system through regulation.
The administration last year tapped Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein to advise on DHS regulations. The legal scholar is best known for his role as the Obama White House’s rulemaking czar and his writings on behavioral economics and regulation — not the finer points of homeland security.
Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas wanted someone equipped for the regulatory challenges the agency faces on immigration, as well as disaster response, aviation security, and other DHS matters, Sunstein said in an interview.
“The first obligation is to do it right,” he said.
The immigration proposals in the works at DHS are critical to meeting at least part of Biden’s ambitious campaign pledge to create a path to citizenship for millions, end long-term detention, and revamp the legal immigration system. The congressional stalemate has made DHS-led efforts more urgent.
DHS first unwound several of former President Donald Trump’s policies, from restricting entry to the U.S. and expanding enforcement. Next, the agency is focused on reducing backlogs in the asylum system and reinforcing protections for immigrants brought to the U.S. as children without authorization.
Photo: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images
Cass Sunstein speaks at an event at AOL Studios on May 31, 2016, in New York City.
Sunstein is shepherding those efforts. Officially, he is senior counselor to the secretary and co-chair of the agency’s climate change action group. Unofficially, he’s the wonk tasked with restoring order in a department battered by public criticism and leadership gaps during the Trump administration.
“I sensed that there was a real appetite for, let’s say, good order,” Sunstein said of the DHS regulatory team’s attitude when he joined the agency almost a year ago.
Sunstein is working on regulations and internal processes across the department’s portfolio, but immigration has taken center stage.
The agency is attempting to cement protections in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which launched via an Obama-era memorandum and has never been reinforced in an official rulemaking. The proposed rule already faces headwinds after a federal court questioned the department’s authority to offer such status.
Another proposal would revamp the asylum process for border crossers, letting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officers adjudicate claims instead of funneling them to backlogged immigration courts.
The approach would streamline the process “so that people who don’t deserve asylum can get that answer in short order and they won’t live in Dante’s purgatory,” Sunstein said. “People who deserve asylum will get that answer in shorter order,” he added.
DHS is also working on a rule that would clarify who’s eligible for asylum. The department will likely release a draft this year, Sunstein said.
“Neither of these is on the backburner,” he said of the asylum measures. The Biden administration on Thursday finalized an increase in visas for temporary nonagricultural workers.
“With Congress not making any major changes in the immigration space right now, regulations are often the best way to make lasting change in the way the laws are interpreted within the department,” American Immigration Council policy counsel Aaron Reichlin-Melnick said.
Bolstering Rules
At the same time, Republicans have taken up border security as a cudgel against Democrats in the lead-up to the midterm elections, and GOP-led states are taking the fight to federal courts — with frequent success so far.
That gives Sunstein the critical job of anticipating possible critiques and making sure the agency’s actions can withstand them. His placement in DHS shows the Biden administration recognizes the legal hazards that lie ahead, former agency official Theresa Cardinal Brown said.
Sunstein “knows the process probably better than just about anybody else you could find right now,” said Brown, now managing director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “He literally has written books on this.” Read more here.
After the Biden administration halted the construction of former President Donald Trump’s border wall, hundreds of unused wall panels were left at construction sites.
The Biden administration halted virtually all work on the federal wall in January 2021. Lt. Col. Chris Mitchell, a spokesperson for the Department of Defense, which had been in charge of awarding some of the federal wall contracts under Trump, said the 32-foot-tall steel bollard panels were at a storage site in San Diego.
The Texas Facilities Commission, the state office in charge of Texas border wall construction, applied in November to receive the surplus panels through the federal government’s General Service Administration, a program that allows nonprofit organizations and state and local governments to receive property the federal government no longer needs.
A welder worked last November on a new section of border wall near Eagle Pass. Credit: Nick Wagner for The Texas Tribune
Francoise Luca, a spokesperson for the Facilities Commission, said the state didn’t have to disclose to the federal government that it planned to use the panels for Texas’ border wall project, adding that the state followed the surplus program’s rules.
In December, the Facilities Commission hired New York-based Posillico Civil Inc. to haul the panels from San Diego to Eagle Pass at a cost of $2 million, according to the contract awarded to the engineering firm. The company finished the job earlier this month.
Luca said the panels are being stored in “a temporary and secured area” in Maverick County under the watch of the Texas National Guard.
With the 1,700 donated panels, the state can erect roughly 1.3 miles of border barrier. Luca said the panels “will be used in the near term” but didn’t say where on the Texas-Mexico border they will be used.
Scott Nicol, a McAllen-based environmental activist, said Biden has broken his pledge not to use taxpayer money to build a wall, pointing to one project in the Rio Grande Valley where crews erected 15-foot concrete panels near the border that the federal government calls levees.
And now “the Biden administration is saying, ‘We won’t build these border walls, but if Abbott wants to build them, we will give him free bollards,’” he said. “The problem with border walls isn’t who is building them, it is the devastation that comes when they are built.”
Nicol said regardless of who is building border barriers, the wall will block the movement of endangered species like ocelots and could cause dangerous flooding.
In June 2021, five months after Biden took office, Abbott announced that the state would build its own wall along the Texas-Mexico border, funding it with state money and private donations. The state has $1.05 billion dedicated to the project — which includes $55 million in private donations as of Feb. 11.
Eight months into the effort, the state has completed 1 mile of barrier in Rio Grande City in Starr County. The Texas General Land Office owned the land, and the Texas Facilities Commission paid $125,000 for it.
In November, the Facilities Commission awarded a $162 million contract to Posillico Civil to build 8 miles of border barrier, including the Starr County section that the Facilities Commission said will total 1.7 miles and cost $34.5 million.
That’s just over $20 million a mile. By comparison, border wall construction under the Trump administration ranged from $6 million to $34 million per mile, according to a Texas Tribune analysis.
The state has said some border residents have offered to donate land to have barriers built on their property. But the state has refused to release the names of those private landowners or the location of those properties, saying that if those details were made public, the properties could be targeted by criminals and owners could drive up the land prices and hurt the Facilities Commission’s negotiations — an indication that the state is also looking to purchase property, although that option hasn’t been publicly discussed.
In July of 2019: Mexico’s Congress passed an asset forfeiture bill; there were no additional changes to Mexico’s counterterrorism legislation in 2019. The government lacked adequate laws prohibiting material support to terrorists and relied on counterterrorism regimes in other countries to thwart potential threats. Additional reading here.
CARTEL monsters have hung nine bodies from a bridge in a chilling warning to rival gangs amid a bloody Mexico turf war.
A tenth victim was also found on a nearby road by horrified residents in the Zacatecas municipality of Cuauhtémoc on Thursday at around 6am.
4
Nine bodies were found suspended from a bridge in the municipality of Cuauhtémoc on ThursdayCredit: Reuters
Officials believe the gruesome display is related to a dispute between cartels in the area Credit: AP
Officials warned the disturbing display was likely to be linked to a savage dispute between ruthless criminal gangs that operate in the area.
The nine bodies were eventually removed from the overpass by police at around 10am local time, as locals went about their day.
According to local media, the majority of the deceased were identified as residents of the small town Cuauhtémoc, which has a population of just 6,660.
“They pay for the sins of others, it is not fair that they do this to us because they pay for the sinners,” one spooked local told TV Azteca Noticias.
Another added: “It’s scary to go out at night. You have to go to sleep early and every night there is noise, motorcycles, screaming, things like that.”
An “intense investigation” was underway, the local government said, although no arrests have yet been made.
***
“Operation Lone Star,” is Gov. Greg Abbott’s evolving and expensive plan to secure the U.S.-Mexico border using thousands of state troopers and Texas National Guardsmen. The operation, launched in March, was initially billed by Abbott as an effort to “deny Mexican Cartels and other smugglers the ability to move drugs and people into Texas,” but has since become a sprawling and controversial experiment in the use of state power to secure an international border.
Democrats have denounced it as illegal and unconstitutional, and called for a Justice Department investigation. Republicans have praised Abbott for taking a stand and pushing the envelope.
Abbott has not asked the Biden administration for permission because he does not believe he needs it. Indeed, the entire operation has been designed to operate exclusively with state resources and agencies, and within the existing confines of state law. That’s both a strength of Abbott’s approach and, as I saw for myself in Del Rio, Texas, a major weakness.
Abbott’s Border Operation Is A Bureaucratic Morass
It’s a weakness because it severely limits what the operation can achieve. The basic idea is that Texas state troopers and National Guard troops will arrest illegal immigrants, who will in turn be prosecuted for misdemeanor criminal trespass in hopes that such prosecutions will serve as a deterrent. Whatever the merits of this approach to border security, it comes with a host of caveats and constraints.
To begin with, Texas is only arresting single adult men, not women, children, or family units, which means the state is targeting the migrant population most likely to be quickly expelled to Mexico under Title 42, the pandemic public health order that allows federal immigration officials to send migrants back over the border with minimal processing. The migrant men arrested by Texas law enforcement, by contrast, will remain in state custody for weeks or longer, rather than being sent back to Mexico.
Up until last week, migrant men arrested under Operation Lone Star who posted bond would be transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which would typically expel them under Title 42. But last week ICE told the state it would no longer take custody of these migrants. That means Texas will have to transfer them to U.S. Border Patrol, and as of this writing it remains an open question whether Border Patrol will expel them as they would have under Title 42, had federal agents arrested them, or process them as asylum-seekers.
If the latter, then Operation Lone Star might have the unintended effect of rewarding migrants caught by state authorities: once they’re processed and released by Border Patrol to pursue their asylum claims, migrants have legal status, are allowed to work, and can remain in the United States as their case wends its way through federal immigration courts — a process that can take up to five years.
But even before these problems arise there are strict conditions that have to be met before state authorities can even make an arrest. Migrants can only be arrested on private land where landowners have agreed to press charges, and only on those parcels of land where the Texas National Guard has managed to erect temporary barriers, usually some arrangement of concertina wire that migrants must cut or go over, to ensure the trespass charges will stick.
And before Texas National Guardsmen in particular can arrest anyone, they’re supposed to go through 40 hours of police training (in practice, I’m told that it’s more like a day-long training). Also, the migrants who are arrested have to be transported to state prisons that have been retrofitted to comply with state jail standards, since migrants are being held in pretrial confinement. That in turn means all the corrections officers have to be trained as jailers.
On top of all these requirements, the entire operation depends on the willingness of local county attorneys to prosecute a deluge of misdemeanor criminal trespass cases arising from all these arrests. In Kinney County, which has a population of less than 4,000, the county attorney is a young man named Brent Smith who just took office in January and has never before worked as a prosecutor. He now has about 1,300 cases and counting thanks to Operation Lone Star. (For context, in normal times the Kinney County prosecutor would only take on a couple dozen cases per year.)
By contrast, in neighboring Val Verde County, the local prosecutor, David Martinez, a Democrat, has rejected nearly half the cases that have come through his office from Operation Lone Star. Last month, Martinez told a local news station he rejected the cases either because the migrants in question were seeking asylum or because there was some other problem with the case. (He cited one case in which state troopers re-directed a group of migrants to cross onto private property so they could arrest them for trespassing.)
For all this, out of about 1,500 criminal trespass cases filed since July through Operation Lone Star, only about 3 percent have resulted in convictions, according to a recent report by the Wall Street Journal, which also cited court records showing that of the 170 Operation Lone Star cases resolved as of November 1, about 70 percent were dismissed, declined, or dropped. The remaining cases ended in plea agreements, with most migrants sentenced to time already served.
Meanwhile, all of this is costing Texas hundreds of millions of dollars. Earlier this year, Abbott shifted about $250 million in the state budget to launch the operation, and the GOP-led state legislature later approved an additional $3 billion. In Del Rio, you can see these dollars at work all over town: every hotel parking lot is full of Texas state trooper trucks and SUVs. Uniformed National Guardsmen drive around in armored Humvees. Along some stretches of private land near the Rio Grande, sparkling new chain-link fencing topped by concertina wire stretches out for miles.
Locals seem to appreciate the effort and money being poured into their communities, especially landowners who feel betrayed and abandoned by the Biden administration. One woman told me her family’s ranch has been repeatedly vandalized this year by migrants — trashed, in fact, for the first time in generations. When they called Border Patrol, the answer came back that no one could be spared to come out and investigate. Their advice was, stay away from your ranch, or move. Their message was, incredibly, we can’t protect you.
Indeed, under the direction of Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Border Patrol has for the past ten months been overwhelmed with the endless task of processing and releasing migrants as fast as it possibly can, with little time or personnel available for patrolling the border. In Del Rio, I spoke to former Border Patrol chief Rodney Scott, who was forced out by the Biden administration in August, and he said agents are demoralized because they’re unable to do their jobs. Instead of intercepting drug and human traffickers or arresting criminals trying to evade detection — the actual job of Border Patrol agents — they’re stuck processing and transporting asylum-seekers.
Scott sees the border as a “national security issue,” but says the Biden administration has a completely different set of priorities. “Unfortunately since January 20, I haven’t seen a single action or even a single conversation while I was still in the chief’s position, to try to slow the flow to actually create a deterrent to illegal entry,” he says. “Every single action has been to basically be more welcoming. How can we process faster? And that’s just going to continue to be an invitation worldwide.”
Is Operation Lone Star Elaborate Political Theater?
Texas, then, really is on its own. Abbott is right that under the circumstances something must be done by the state, but so far his solution seems overly lawyerly and cautious, designed specifically to pass legal muster and win lawsuits rather than create a real deterrent to illegal immigration.
A cynic might suspect that Operation Lone Star, for all its complex interagency coordination and mass deployment of manpower and expensive price tag, is in the end mostly political theater. Its purpose might not be to secure the border so much as to secure Abbott’s right flank against a pair of Republican primary challengers, former GOP Texas Chairman Allen West and former state senator Don Huffines, who accuse Abbott of being too soft on the border.
Given the resources at Abbott’s disposal, West and Huffines — along with plenty of Texas conservatives who are frustrated about the ongoing border crisis — arguably have a point. Former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, who led U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services under Trump, has argued that border states have a strong constitutional case for securing their own international borders in the face of federal inaction. Cuccinelli and others cite Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution, which stipulates that no state can engage in diplomacy or war without the consent of Congress, “unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit delay.”
The ongoing border crisis, which has seen a record 1.7 million arrests at the southwest border in the last 12 months, constitutes both an invasion and an imminent danger that will not admit delay, the argument goes, and states have a right to act. Not only could border state governors like Abbott invoke emergency powers to return illegal immigrants directly to Mexico, state legislatures could pass laws making it more difficult for illegal immigrants to remain in those states, mostly through strict licensure and screening requirements for sponsors and refugee resettlement organizations.
All of these things, and much else besides, lie far outside the scope of what Abbott is doing in Texas. There is no question at this point that Operation Lone Star, whatever its merits, will not significantly change the situation along the Rio Grande. The border crisis created by the Biden administration is here to stay — a new normal along the southwest border for as long as the White House desires it.
What could change that? Texas could. Abbott could. He has already demonstrated an impressive ability to mobilize and deploy thousands of Texas law enforcement and military personnel, along with every manner of vehicles, barriers, and transports. Nothing like Operation Lone Star has ever been undertaken, yet it is too little, too late — too pinched and small-minded a response to a rolling crisis that now appears to be permanent.
Abbott could wield these tools to press the constitutional question about what border states can do when the federal government leaves them to their own devices. If he doesn’t, he might find the people of Texas are ready to listen to someone who will. source