{"id":1439574,"date":"2022-04-15T07:45:21","date_gmt":"2022-04-15T11:45:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1439574"},"modified":"2022-04-15T07:45:31","modified_gmt":"2022-04-15T11:45:31","slug":"gov-abbott-is-staging-political-theater-as-the-border-explodes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/gov-abbott-is-staging-political-theater-as-the-border-explodes\/","title":{"rendered":"Gov. Abbott Is Staging Political Theater As The Border Explodes"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fgov-abbott-is-staging-political-theater-as-the-border-explodes%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1439574&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>There seems to be some confusion about what\u2019s happening along the border in Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott last week ordered state troopers to begin inspecting every commercial vehicle coming into the state from Mexico at more than two dozen international crossings.<\/p>\n<p>Abbott claims these \u201cenhanced safety inspections\u201d are needed to check for human trafficking, weapons, and drugs coming in from Mexico. Federal authorities usually conduct these inspections but, says Abbott, given the dramatic increase in illegal border-crossings and the looming cancellation of Title 42, which for the past two years has allowed for the speedy expulsion of most illegal immigrants, another layer of inspections is warranted.<\/p>\n<p>But the real purpose of the inspections is to grind commercial traffic at the border to a halt to put pressure on President Biden to deal with a border crisis that\u2019s about to get exponentially worse. Abbott\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcdfw.com\/news\/local\/texas-news\/frustration-grows-over-truck-backlogs-at-texas-mexico-border\/2939116\/\">said as much in a press conference Wednesday<\/a>\u00a0with Samuel Alejandro Garc\u00eda Sep\u00falveda, the governor of the Mexican state of Nuevo Le\u00f3n, announcing an agreement to work together on border security. <\/p>\n<p>Nuevo Le\u00f3n shares a short 12-mile stretch of border with Texas just north of Laredo. But the capital of Nuevo Le\u00f3n is the major industrial hub of Monterrey, whose business leaders no doubt want cross-border trade to return to normal as quickly as possible \u2014 hence the meeting between Abbott and Garc\u00eda.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cClogged bridges can end only through the collaboration that we are demonstrating today between Texas and Nuevo Le\u00f3n,\u201d Abbott said. \u201cIf you want relief from the clogged border, you need to contact President Biden and tell him to maintain the Title 42 expulsion policy that has been in place for years.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So there you have it: the purpose of Abbott\u2019s border inspections is not really to intercept weapons and drugs and human trafficking, it\u2019s about snarling international trade and inflicting economic pain to force Biden to maintain Title 42.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The agreement with Nuevo Le\u00f3n, like\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/04\/13\/to-secure-the-border-texas-gov-greg-abbott-should-shut-it-down\/\">Abbott\u2019s gimmick to bus migrants to Washington<\/a>, is mostly for show. The details of the agreement are vague, but the general idea is that Garc\u00eda\u2019s government will step up efforts to deter illegal immigrants transiting through Nuevo Le\u00f3n en route to the border. But because Nuevo Le\u00f3n\u2019s one international bridge isn\u2019t a major crossing point for either commercial trucks or illegal immigrants, and because Mexico\u2019s National Guard alone has the authority to arrest and transport illegal immigrants inside Mexico, it\u2019s unclear how effective Garc\u00eda\u2019s efforts will be.<\/p>\n<p>There are two things to note about all this. The first is that squeezing international trade at the border is one sure way to get the attention of powerful interests who don\u2019t really care about record levels of illegal immigration as long as goods keeps flowing over the border. <\/p>\n<p>The editors of the Wall Street Journal\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/greg-abbotts-5-dollar-avocados-border-truck-inspections-texas-immigration-title-42-biden-administration-11649883065?mod=opinion_lead_pos2\">spoke for those interests<\/a>\u00a0Wednesday when they criticized Abbott\u2019s inspections scheme as a misguided stunt that will only make the border problem worse. For them, the worst part of all this will be $5 avocados, as if cheap goods are more important than American sovereignty and security.<\/p>\n<p>But guess who else thinks Abbott\u2019s inspections are a misguided stunt? The Gulf Cartel, which\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/policy\/cartels-reportedly-set-fire-to-trucks-at-border-to-force-bridge-reopening\">set fire to four commercial trucks Wednesday afternoon<\/a>\u00a0on the entrance to the northbound ramp of the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge, where on Monday Mexican truckers had staged a protest of Abbott\u2019s inspections, shutting down all traffic on the bridge. The cartel wanted the protest to end and the bridge to open, and a few hours later it did, although the inspections in Texas continue.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"602\" height=\"756\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Screen-Shot-2022-04-14-at-4.18.28-PM.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-270781\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Screen-Shot-2022-04-14-at-4.18.28-PM.png 602w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Screen-Shot-2022-04-14-at-4.18.28-PM-239x300-1.png 239w\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>The cartel wanted the bridge open because it uses commercial trucks to transport illegal drugs and migrants into the United States on an industrial scale. Days-long delays cost the cartel money, and it got tired of waiting. In this, at least, the cartels in Mexico and big business in the United States have something in common: they don\u2019t care about crisis levels of illegal immigration so long as their products keep moving.<\/p>\n<p>The second thing to note is that by targeting international trade and holding a press conference with Mexican governors, Abbott is opting for show over substance, which has been his approach to the border crisis from the beginning. As\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/04\/13\/to-secure-the-border-texas-gov-greg-abbott-should-shut-it-down\/\">I\u2019ve described in detail<\/a>, his much-vaunted Operation Lone Star is nothing but elaborate (and expensive) political theater that has had no discernable effect on illegal immigration over the past year.<\/p>\n<p>To be fair, enlisting the help of state governors in Mexico at least has the potential to help the situation at the border, depending on what those governors do. It certainly holds more promise than busing migrants to Washington or ordering the Texas State Guard to line up a bunch of SUVs on the north bank of the Rio Grande for a photoshoot.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But enlisting the help of Mexico represents a conceptual failure on Abbott\u2019s part. If he thinks that outsourcing border enforcement to governors and state police forces in places like Tamaulipas and Coahuila is going to work, he has utterly failed to understand the problem at the border \u2014 a failure that President Trump, for all his correct instincts about the importance of border security, shared. <\/p>\n<p>Put bluntly, northern Mexico is mostly governed by cartels and massive criminal organizations \u2014\u00a0<em>de facto<\/em>\u00a0certainly, and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/opinions\/how-the-sinaloa-cartel-rules\/\">increasingly\u00a0<em>de jure<\/em><\/a>. Those organizations have no interest in putting a stop to illegal immigration because they are making billions of dollars charging fees to migrants who pass through their territory and over the Rio Grande.<\/p>\n<p>The only thing that will ever secure the border and get illegal immigration down to at least manageable levels is a robust enforcement and deportation regime on the U.S. side of the border \u2014 one that doesn\u2019t process migrants and release them into the United States, but sends them back into Mexico or flies them back to their country of origin. It is within Abbott\u2019s power to create such a regime at the state level \u2014 that is, to bus migrants two miles south to Mexico, instead of 1,700 miles north to Washington. He has the resources and manpower and even\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/04\/12\/gov-abbotts-d-c-caravan-gimmick-wont-secure-the-border-heres-what-will\/\">a strong constitutional case for taking action<\/a>, but this is the one thing he has so far refused to do.<\/p>\n<p>Until he changes his mind, no amount of economic pain at commercial crossings, no photo ops with Mexican governors, or headlines about migrants getting bussed to Washington will change the brute fact about the border in south Texas: it is about to explode.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There seems to be some confusion about what\u2019s happening along the border in Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott last week ordered state troopers to begin inspecting every commercial vehicle coming<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":518,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1439574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1439574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/518"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1439574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1439574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1439574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1439574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1439574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}