Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accused the Biden administration on Sunday of helping cartels move people across the southern border.
The GOP prosecutor responded to the Department of Justice (DOJ) threatening to sue his state over a new law allowing Texas authorities to arrest migrants who enter the United States illegally and giving local judges more authority to order them to leave.
“It’s pretty crazy to see what’s happened over the last three years of the Biden administration. Those numbers, as you have seen, get worse, not better,” Paxton said during an appearance on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” alluding to the record-setting number of migrants crossing the U.S. southern border.
“It’s not like they’re solving the problem. They’re actually helping aid and abet the cartels. And then Texas says, ‘We have had enough. We’re going to do something about it.’ And then they threaten us from enforcing our own laws,” he added. “It seems pretty crazy. And it’s hard to believe that we have a government that is working against its own citizens and helping the cartels move as many people across the border as possible.”
In a letter sent to Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott last week, the DOJ threatened to sue, accusing the state of interfering with the federal government by moving to enforce federal immigration law. Abbott’s office responded by saying Texas is ready to take the legal fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.
Paxton argued there is “no way” U.S. immigration courts can manage the number of asylum seekers, contending that the backlog allows people to “disappear” by the time their court date comes up. The Texas attorney general also said that dealing with the border crisis has a cost in the billions of dollars, but he stressed that crime, particularly human and drug trafficking, is the most “significant” problem arising from the situation.
“We have literally thousands of kids dying from fentanyl overdoses that don’t have to die because we have the cartels having an easy line into Texas and an easy line to get into the country,” Paxton said. “And so it is having a significant impact, and it is going to spread beyond Texas, beyond the border states. It is an American problem. And I think it’s clearly caused by the Biden administration.”
Paxton also bemoaned how the federal government sought to remove the razor wire that Texas officials installed along the Rio Grande River to stop illegal immigrants from entering the country, leading to a legal challenge that is making its way through the court system.
“We merely want to protect our own citizens from the crime and the cost of illegal immigration, when it’s really their job to do it,” Paxton said. “And, instead, we’ve got the Biden administration, as I said, aiding and abetting the cartels, encouraging the cartels to make billions of dollars and to bring as many people here as possible — as fast as possible and as soon as possible.”
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