{"id":1544043,"date":"2022-07-08T07:50:58","date_gmt":"2022-07-08T11:50:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1544043"},"modified":"2022-07-08T07:51:31","modified_gmt":"2022-07-08T11:51:31","slug":"greg-abbotts-new-executive-order-on-the-border-crisis-is-less-than-it-appears-to-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/greg-abbotts-new-executive-order-on-the-border-crisis-is-less-than-it-appears-to-be\/","title":{"rendered":"Greg Abbott\u2019s New Executive Order On The Border Crisis Is Less Than It Appears To Be"},"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\">32<\/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%2Fgreg-abbotts-new-executive-order-on-the-border-crisis-is-less-than-it-appears-to-be%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=1544043&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--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Screen-Shot-2022-07-07-at-4.27.34-PM-e1657230302461.png\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order Thursday seemingly designed to put pressure on the Biden administration to take the border crisis seriously and enforce federal immigration law. But the likely result of the governor\u2019s action won\u2019t be a reduction in illegal immigration, it will be a federal lawsuit against Texas.<\/p>\n<p>Abbott\u2019s order directs the Texas National Guard and the Texas Department of Public Safety to \u201capprehend illegal immigrants who illegally cross the border between ports of entry and return them to the border.\u201d What does this mean? It does <em>not<\/em> mean that Texas law enforcement will be expelling illegal immigrants to Mexico, as some Texas counties have <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/07\/06\/texas-counties-say-the-border-crisis-is-an-invasion-theyre-not-wrong\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">called on Abbott to authorize<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>In practice, it means that Texas state troopers and National Guardsman, whom Abbott has already deployed to the border as part of Operation Lone Star, will now be authorized to arrest illegal immigrants near the border and transport them directly to the nearest port of entry. What will happen once they get there remains to be seen.<\/p>\n<p>Ports of entry are run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and under normal circumstances, illegal immigrants arrested by state or local law enforcement would be picked up by CBP officers or Border Patrol agents and transported to a CBP processing facility. That is, state and local law enforcement don\u2019t usually transport illegal immigrants anywhere, they simply assist Border Patrol and CBP because it is the federal government\u2019s job to enforce federal immigration law, not the states\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>But under Abbott\u2019s order, that will apparently change. Texas troopers and National Guardsmen will be arresting illegal immigrants and transporting them directly to the border, to ports of entry inside Texas that are run by CBP. As of this writing, it is unclear whether CBP will cooperate with state law enforcement officials in this scheme or what the reaction of federal border officials will be at ports of entry when Texas state troopers show up with a busload of illegal immigrants.<\/p>\n<p>One obvious problem with this plan (aside from a lack of federal cooperation) is that there\u2019s really no place to process or house more than a handful of people at these port of entry facilities. Even the larger ports of entry, such as the one in Laredo, Texas, can only house a few dozen people at most, and not for long periods of time.<\/p>\n<p>All of this would suggest that Abbott\u2019s executive order is more of a legal strategy than an operational shift in border enforcement \u2014 one that\u2019s designed not to expel illegal immigrants or reduce illegal immigration but to provoke the Biden administration into a legal battle with Texas.<\/p>\n<p>Why would Abbott want the Biden administration to sue? Because the Biden administration\u2019s refusal to secure the border and enforce federal immigration laws has provoked an ongoing debate about the extent of state authority to police the border in the face of federal inaction. If Abbott can show, in federal court, that he is operating within the law and the Constitution, and actually get a federal court to agree, then it would not only protect individual state troopers and National Guardsmen from potential prosecution by the Department of Justice, it might also open up new avenues for border enforcement at the state level.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s one theory, anyway. There are others. Abbott\u2019s order comes on the heels of a declaration issued by a half-dozen Texas counties and one city earlier this week that the border crisis is an \u201cinvasion\u201d under Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the Constitution, which says states can\u2019t conduct foreign policy or engage in war, \u201cunless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit delay.\u201d These local officials believe that Texas has been \u201cactually invaded,\u201d and that Abbott has the constitutional authority to order state law enforcement to arrest and expel to Mexico any foreign national arrested for illegally crossing the border, with or without the permission of federal authorities.<\/p>\n<p>The locals aren\u2019t alone in this belief. Former Trump administration officials Russ Vought and Ken Cuccinelli have argued the same, as has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/arizona-ag-brnovich-legal-opinion-declaring-border-crisis-invasion-constitution\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich<\/a>. Vought and Cuccinelli <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/amrenewctr\/status\/1545122222620217351?s=20&#038;t=zfHbYJNwF5Dtmznf4aQl-A\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">issued a statement<\/a> Thursday after Abbott\u2019s order came out saying the governor\u2019s policy falls short, and, because it does not authorize Texas law enforcement to expel illegal immigrants directly to Mexico, is \u201cstill catch and release.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><\/figure>\n<p>Technically, they\u2019re right. Abbott\u2019s order, like Operation Lone Star, won\u2019t do anything to change the fundamental policies in play on the border. Catch and release, whereby illegal immigrants are arrested after crossing into the U.S., processed, and then released pending a county hearing, will still be in place after Abbott\u2019s order goes into effect.<\/p>\n<p>Abbott\u2019s critics (<a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/04\/15\/gov-abbott-is-staging-political-theater-as-the-border-explodes\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">including me<\/a>), have faulted him for a lack of boldness and imagination on the border crisis, for taking a too-cautious approach to a too-important issue. A strategy designed to provoke a legal fight in federal court, for example, might not be the worst idea, but it reflects Abbott\u2019s process-bound legal mindset on what is fundamentally a political issue \u2014 one that could threaten his legitimacy as governor, at least among his erstwhile supporters in the GOP.<\/p>\n<p>The risk for Abbott is not just that his legal gambit fails, but that his own fellow Texas Republicans perceive his \u201creturn to the border\u201d language as a kind of sleight of hand, a shell game designed to make Texans think he\u2019s doing something big and bold, when in fact nothing much on the ground is really changing.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, so far nothing Abbott has done has changed the fundamental dynamics at the border. Every month sets a new record for arrests of illegal border-crossers, with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbp.gov\/newsroom\/stats\/southwest-land-border-encounters\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">nearly 240,000 arrests recorded in May<\/a>, an all-time record. The blame for that of course lies squarely with President Biden, whose administration has <a href=\"https:\/\/cis.org\/Arthur\/Disclosures-Biden-Has-Released-Nearly-105-million-SW-Border-Migrants-US\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">released more than a million illegal immigrants into the country<\/a> since he took office.<\/p>\n<p>But at some point, Abbott, as governor of the state where the vast majority of these illegal crossings are taking place, will bear some responsibility for failing to take sufficient action to defend his state. A growing chorus of criticism, from policy experts, lawyers, local officials, and ordinary Texans, suggests that the politics of the border crisis might have already overtaken Abbott, and that whatever legal stratagems he has in mind might well be too little, too late.<\/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>Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order Thursday seemingly designed to put pressure on the Biden administration to take the border crisis seriously and enforce federal immigration law. But<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":518,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1544043","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\/1544043","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=1544043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1544043\/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=1544043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1544043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1544043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}