Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, along with the Department of Public Safety (DPS), launched ‘Operation Lone Star’ on Saturday, a program that will work to combat the smuggling of drugs and people across the southern border.
The program will send law enforcement personnel and resources to “high-risk areas” along the border “to deprive Mexican cartels and other smugglers of transporting drugs and people to Texas.”
“The crisis at our southern border is escalating as a result of Biden administration policies that refuse to secure the border and invite illegal immigration,” Abbott said in a statement. “Texas supports legal immigration, but will not be an accomplice to the open border policy that is causing a humanitarian crisis in our state, rather than preventing it and endangering the lives of Texans.”
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The Texas National Guard and DPS will work together on the new program.
Abbott’s announcement comes days after a skirmish between Republican Gov. Texas and President Biden across the border. “The Biden government must stop importing COVID into our country,” Abbott told CNBC on Thursday. More than 100 illegal immigrants released in the U.S. tested positive for Covid-19 this week.
“This is a Neanderthal approach to dealing with the COVID situation,” Abott said in words the president had used against him the day before. Biden calls Abbott’s decision to remove the state’s mask mandates “Neanderthal thinking.”
Meanwhile, the Biden government is facing a dramatic increase in unaccompanied children at the border, a sign of how resources have been overwhelmed within months of the new government.
Axios reports that in the week ending March 1, the Border Patrol referred an average of 321 minors a day to Health and Human Services (HHS). This is a dramatic increase of 47 at the beginning of January and an average of 203 at the beginning of February.
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Department of Health and Human Services officials plan for 117,000 children to come to the border unaccompanied this year.
Biden’s government has abolished the Migration Protection Protocols (MPPs), halted the construction of the border wall and resumed capture and release – releasing migrants into the US interior. The practice was terminated in 2019 by the Trump administration.
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It has kept Title 42 protection in place – allowing migrants to be turned around quickly due to the coronavirus pandemic – but so far it has not attempted to apply it to unaccompanied children.
Fox News’ Adam Shaw contributed to this report.