In late January, U.S. authorities reported a greater number of illegal border crossings for December than for any other month of Joe Biden’s presidency.
Amid all the federal inaction, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott took matters into his own hands.
He started building his own border wall.
Abbott, a Republican mentioned as a possible contender for president, has been trumpeting the Texas Facilities Commission’s $224 contract with Fisher Sand & Gravel Company. As chief executive, he’s taking credit for the state-funded border wall.
Take a look —
Texas is building our own border wall. pic.twitter.com/Ff72b2ZwJQ
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) February 6, 2023
Some critics questioned the effectiveness of Abbott’s border wall. Former President Donald Trump fortified the border along southwestern U.S. only for smugglers to reportedly cut through the wall. In Arizona, former Gov. Doug Ducey placed shipping containers along the border only for illegal immigrants to walk around the containers.
“Being the mayor of the largest inland port, I am a supporter of border security, but I am not convinced that a physical border wall will do anything except divide our community along partisan lines,” Laredo Mayor Dr. Victor Travino told the Laredo Morning Times last month.
“In speaking with my counterpart in Nuevo Laredo, Alcaldesa Carmen Lilia Canturosas, we believe security can be achieved by working closer together than by being divided.”
Still, Abbott supporters consider the wall to be an improvement over federal inaction. They’ve described the wall as cost-effective insurance against illegal immigration.
“As we continue to see, Gov. (Greg) Abbott is concerned about Texas and its safety. I’m glad to see that the wall will continue to be built (in our area),” Webb County GOP Chair Luis De La Garza told the paper.
In December, El Paso, Texas, has become the busiest of the Border Patrol’s nine sectors on the Mexican border for a third month in a row.
The city was overwhelmed with migrants who were released to pursue their immigration cases in the U.S. in the weeks leading up to Biden’s visit on Jan. 8, his first to the border as president.
Biden said in January that the U.S. would admit up to 30,000 people a month under humanitarian parole from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, allowing them to live and work for two years if they apply online, pay airfare and find a financial sponsor. At the same time, Mexico agreed to take back the same number from those four countries who enter the U.S. illegally and can be removed under the pandemic-era rule known as Title 42.
In December, More migrants were also stopped from Ecuador and Peru, but border communities were experiencing an especially large surge in arrivals from both Cuba and Nicaragua.
Cubans were stopped nearly 43,000 times in December, up 23% from November and more than quintuple the same period a year earlier. Nicaraguans were stopped more than 35,000 times, up 3% from November and more than double from December 2021.
The U.S. has yet to release the data from January.
The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contributed to this article.