The federal government of the United States has jurisdiction over the border problem but is doing nothing to stop it and might in fact be encouraging it.
So the state of Texas announces that it will take action:
Texas’ top three leaders, Governor Rick Perry, Lt. Governor David Dewhurst, and House Speaker Joe Straus directed the Department of Public Safety to immediately begin law enforcement surge operations along the Texas-Mexico border…The surge operations will cost $1.3 million each week, and DPS is authorized to continue the operations for the rest of the year…In a statement, Governor Perry said, “Texas can’t afford to wait for Washington to act on this crisis and we will not sit idly by while the safety and security of our citizens are threatened.”State officials worry that while the federal government scrambles to house thousands of unaccompanied children crossing the border, there are fewer federal agents to keep up with criminals and gangs trying to get into the U.S.The state says last year, when DPS conducted Operation Strong Safety, crime rates related to drug cartels, gangs, and other illegal border activity dropped sharply.
Note what’s being said here. My understanding is that the state can use the increased patrols only to help prevent entry or to apprehend illegal immigrants and turn them over to the feds; they can’t actually deport people if the Obama administration refuses to do so.
The huge number of families and children illegally coming to this country is not even the issue on which Texas is concentrating here. Rather, it’s that their entry is flooding the border and distracting the guards’ time and energy while the drug cartels climb aboard.
We don’t know how families are getting the money to come here, and your conspiracy theory is probably as good as mine—and I do have some. But even if the majority of families/kids are coming because they think they will be allowed to stay and get services, and/or to flee the violence in their home countries, rather than purposely as decoys for the cartels, they are serving as de facto decoys for them nonetheless.
So if fleeing the danger posed by murderous drug cartels in their countries of origin is one of their motivations, then it’s highly ironic that escaping in this manner will serve to facilitate the entry of those very same dangerous people into the US, while the border guards are busy being babysitters.
And our president, whose duty it is to protect the US as a sovereign country, defend its borders, and follow the rule of law—including its immigration laws—encourages the first (the illegal entry of kids and families) and winks at the second (the illegal entry of criminals).
Incidentally (or not so incidentally), both would help turn Texas blue and at the same time harm it financially. And this DPS money doesn’t come from nowhere; it comes from Texans.
[Neo-neocon is a writer with degrees in law and family therapy, who blogs at neo-neocon.]
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