Texas Gov. Abbott slams Biden’s immigration policies as VP Harris announces first border visit

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has slammed US President Joe Biden’s immigration policies ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris’s first visit to the crisis-ridden southern border.

The Republican governor said the White House’s “open border policies” are allowing Texas to be “overrun” by “gangs and smugglers.”

“The vice president was named Border Czar over 90 days ago, and in that time Texans have had their homes broken into, property damaged, and guns pointed at their heads as cartels, smugglers, and human traffickers profit off the Biden administration’s reckless open-border policies,” Abbott said in a statement on Wednesday.

The Texas governor described Biden’s immigration policies as “reckless”, and accused Harris of “ignoring the real problem areas along our southern border.”

Former US president Donald Trump has been invited by Abbott to tour the “decimated” southern border on June 30.

Trump said Biden had turned the border into an “unmitigated disaster zone” and created the “single worst border crisis in US history.”

“After months of ignoring the crisis at the southern Border, it is great that we got Kamal Harris to finally go and see the tremendous destruction and death that they’ve created –a direct result of Biden ending my very tough but fair Border policies,” Trump wrote in statement Wednesday.

“Harris and Biden were given the strongest Border in American history. And now, it is by far the worst in American history. If Governor [Greg] Abbott [of Texas] and I weren’t going there next week, she would have never gone!” Trump claimed.

Harris will head to El Paso, Texas on Friday, her first visit to the area since she was appointed as Border Czar more than 90 days ago.

She visited Guatemala and Mexico earlier this month to “address the root causes of migration” into the US.

US Customs and Border Protection has reported a 249 percent surge in attempts to enter the US illegally since late last year. CBP has also reported a 900 percent increase in arrests of illegal immigrants with criminal records.

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The influx of migrants, in particular unaccompanied children, came after Biden rolled back Trump's "hardline immigration policies" immediately after he assumed office in January.

Biden issued a flurry of immigration-related executive decisions, including orders to end “extreme immigration enforcement”, and preserve and fortify the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which gives work permits and protection from deportation to people brought illegally to the US as minors.

The US president also halted construction of Trump’s Mexico border wall and ordered an end to the “Remain in Mexico” policy, under which tens of thousands of asylum applicants were awaiting rulings in Mexico.

In March, Abbott launched ‘Operation Lone Star’ alongside the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) to combat a surge in human and drug trafficking into the state.

As of Wednesday, Abbott said the operation had made 1,700 criminal arrests, apprehended more than 41,000 illegal migrants and “seized enough fentanyl to kill over 21 million people,” referring to a powerful synthetic opioid frequently involved in drug overdoses.

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