Chris Lange, FISM News
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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott debuted the first section of the state-funded border wall in the Rio Grande Valley, making good on his promise to address the Lone Star State’s unprecedented border crisis in response to President Biden’s “failure to do his job.”
“The State of Texas has taken comprehensive action to secure our southern border and address the border crisis while President Biden has sat idly by,” said the Republican governor in a press release. “In June, I promised Texans that we would step up in the federal government’s absence and build our own border wall. We have wasted no time in the six months since that promise was made, and I am proud to announce that construction of the Texas border wall is now underway.” Abbott added that the construction of a state-funded border wall “serves as a major milestone in our efforts to combat illegal immigration, stop the smuggling of drugs and people, and keep our communities safe.”
During a Saturday press conference, Abbott sharply rebuked the Biden administration for its self-inflicted, staggering border crisis and the president’s refusal to turn over billions of dollars’ worth of material from the federal wall that lay unused in massive, rusting piles along the southern border.
Texas has officially started building its own border wall.
Biden allows open border policies and refuses to enforce laws passed by Congress to secure the border and enforce immigration laws.
Texas is stepping up to do the federal government’s job. https://t.co/K7CbIPs75p
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) December 17, 2021
The governor authorized the building of the wall in June, approving $3 billion in funding for the Texas Facilities Commission to assist with the effort. Private citizens have also donated $54 million toward the wall’s construction thus far.
As he stood in front of the first section of the wall, which stands 30-feet high and spans roughly 800 feet, Abbott reiterated the urgent need to secure the southern border and mitigate the untenable crisis for the safety and well-being of American citizens.
“Already this year there have been over 1.2 million people apprehended coming over the border illegally,” he said, adding that the figure does not include individuals who were able to cross into the U.S. undetected. This secton of wall, when completed, will extend 1.3 miles through state-owned farmland donated by the Texas General Land Office for the project. This will be one of a total of 8 miles of wall sections that will be built in Starr County alone to help “fill in gaps” left from Biden’s abandonment of the border wall project.
The Lone Star State governor also referenced America’s growing fentanyl crisis created by Biden’s unwillingness to enforce U.S. border laws, allowing drug cartels to smuggle the deadly drug into the U.S. Authorities, he said, have seized enough of the lethal drug “to kill every man, woman and child in Texas, California, New York, Illinois, and Florida combined.”
The state-funded wall is one part of a “multi-pronged” strategy, which Abbott says will also include assistance from the National Guard and the Texas Department of Public Safety in terms of apprehending individuals attempting to illegally enter the U.S. “Once it is completed, it will have multiple detection devices. People we apprehend will be charged with trespassing to the state of Texas, and those charges will lead to them going to jail,” he said.
New Customs and Border Protection data shows that agents reported 173,620 encounters at the southern border last month alone, signifying a 140 percent increase since last year. November encounters surpassed October reports by 10,000, and encounters increased nearly 130 percent between Oct. 2020 and Oct. 2021.
President Biden, on his first day in office, issued an executive order halting construction of the border wall which began under the Trump administration, reallocating the $2.2 billion previously designated for the wall to other federal projects.