Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott just signed six border bills into law on Thursday in an apparent effort to solve the ongoing southern border crisis.
The newly signed laws range from designating cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, to creating an interstate compact, to expanding resources for law enforcement.
“Washington, D.C. has failed to do its job to secure our border. As a result, Texas has had to take unprecedented steps in responding to the crisis created by the Biden administration. The Texas legislature has stepped up,” Abbott said.
$5.1 billion would be allocated to the state’s border security mission, Operation Lone Star (OLS). The governor said that Texas has spent nearly $10 billion “to deal with the crisis and chaos caused by the Biden administration.”
He said that OLS had effectively stopped illegal entry into Texas by constructing miles of concertina wire border walls and supplementing them with officers from the Texas Military Department and Department of Public Safety. These strategies have “directly stopped people from entering Texas illegally,” the governor claimed.
Abbott also said that further border security bills will likely be introduced as part of a special legislative session, but only after the legislature agrees on how to reduce property taxes by $18 billion.
The bills he signed were SB 1900, SB 1484, SB 423, SB 1403, SB 1133, and SB 602. All relate to the state’s border issues and strengthen his authority over law enforcement.
“[The Texas Military Department have] been authorized to use them for various purposes but we wanted to make sure it’s crystal clear [what] they can do so to secure the border,” the governor said of SB 423.
SB 602, meanwhile, specifically authorizes the U.S. Border Patrol to arrest people for committing crimes within state borders.
“A request was made to the state of Texas by Border Patrol,” Abbott said of the bill, adding that this gives them “more tools to secure the border, powers of arrest and search and seizure for any felony offense under Texas law if the arrest, search or seizure is incident to a containment under federal law and occurs at a port of entry or at a Border Patrol check point.”
