Texas has taken border security measures into its own hands, after the Biden administration has failed to do much at all about the rising problem.
And while those measures seem to be working quite well for Texas, they have resulted in illegal border crossings shifting west to Arizona.
On Tuesday, Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee spoke to Newsmax’s “The National Report” program while she was visiting Eagle Pass, Texas. The city has become a symbol of illegal immigration recently, as makeshift barriers that were erected by Texas officials there have “slowed the migration,” as Blackburn said.
However, the measures Texas has taken have only shifted the problem to other states. Illegal crossings have increased in recent months in California and Arizona.
Blackburn said that it’s the job of President Joe Biden to use executive action to reinstate some of the policies that were implemented during the Trump administration to contain issues at the U.S. southern border with Mexico.
As she explained:
“The record encounters continue, and they’re pushing further west and into Arizona because here in Texas and Eagle Pass, they decided to … put up containers, buoys, razor-wire fencing that has really slowed the migration right here at the Eagle Pass crossing.
“Now, it is going to continue because Joe Biden took 94 executive actions in his first 100 days that intentionally opened the border and weakened immigration law. And what we are hearing is that as you push into Arizona, as you get into California, the crossings have increased there.”
Blackburn also pointed out that there have been almost 10 million illegal immigrants enter the U.S. since Biden took office in early 2021. She continued:
“It is, indeed, a policy problem, and the policies are the changes Joe Biden has made. Under Donald Trump, you did not have this wide-open border. They had the border contained.”
While Texas has certainly been happy with the results of its border mitigation efforts, even its top officials know that it doesn’t solve the problem of illegal immigration as a whole.
Just last week, Ken Patton, the attorney general of Texas, told Newsmax that the barriers the state has installed don’t “help the overall problem, but it does help Texas.”
In addition to installing razor wire fencing in Eagle Pass, the state has also put up floating barriers in parts of the Rio Grande as deterrents for illegal immigrants who are thinking about crossing into the U.S. there.
Governor Greg Abbott has also coordinated multiple buses and flights full of migrants who come to Texas, sending them off to sanctuary cities such as Los Angeles, New York City, Boston and Chicago.
All of those cities are now having significant trouble handling the influx of migrants, as they’ve caused big strains on their budgets.
All of this leads back to one thing for Blackburn: That Biden needs to act on border security and immigration. As she said:
“Joe Biden has the authority. He needs to take an action today and say, ‘You will not cross. You will stay in Mexico. We will not let you in.’”
