At 4 o’clock in the morning — in the cover of night — the Texas Legislature passed a series of “border security” bills that will not improve border security but will harm border communities and deprive both immigrants and U.S. citizens of their fundamental rights.
What do these bills do?
Gives broad authority to state and local police to arrest, imprison, and deport immigrants — including at what should be safe spaces like rape crisis centers;
Makes driving an undocumented family member to the doctor, to church, or to school a “human smuggling” offense carrying a 10-year mandatory prison sentence;
Allows Texas authorities to separate children from their parents at the border — just as Trump did in 2018;
Subjects Latino residents throughout the state of Texas to racial profiling by law enforcement; and
Spends $1.5 billion to continue Trump’s ineffective border wall.
Will these bills “improve border security”?
There are real solutions to our challenges at the border, but these aren’t them.
Even if one is tempted to accept the cruelty, the massive expense, and the harm done to border residents and Latino families, the policies just passed by the Republican-majority legislature just don’t work.
In fact, border crossings have INCREASED in the areas where Abbott has spent billions of taxpayer dollars on asylum seeker arrests, border walls, razor wire, and a floating wall of buoys in the Rio Grande.
Don’t be fooled by the governor’s lies. Though the optics of walls, mass arrests of asylum seekers, and militarized border communities might give Abbott and Texas Republicans the perfect backdrop for their next campaign ads, the facts tell us this isn’t working. Maybe that’s why Abbott felt he had to cook the books when asking the legislature for more money.
What are real solutions?
When Texas Republicans are ready to get to work on real solutions, they can come together with Democrats, Congress, and President Biden to:
Hire more asylum judges and increase processing capacity to more quickly resolve asylum cases and humanely remove people without valid claims;
Establish safe, orderly pathways to seek asylum at legal ports of entry — so that migrants no longer have to pay smugglers to cross dangerous stretches of river and desert in search of safety;
Expand work authorizations so that asylum seekers can fully contribute to the communities that welcome them and no longer have to rely on local aid and shelter capacity;
Modernize legal ports of entry and vehicle checkpoints, where 93% of fentanyl comes into the country; and
Improve coordination with partners in the Western Hemisphere so that other countries fairly share responsibility in helping asylum seekers find safety, housing, and jobs throughout the region.
Abbott and Co. are making a mess of the border. But it doesn’t have to be like this. We can push for something better, moving past political posturing and towards the real solutions that Texans deserve.