New data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) show the severity of the Biden border crisis reaching a new milestone with more than 1.73 million arrests made in the 2021 fiscal year, the highest ever recorded. More than 1.1 million were single adults.
“I’ve been there before,” President Joe Biden said of the southwest border in a CNN town hall Thursday when pressed whether he’d plan a visit. “I guess I should go down.”
Biden however, hasn’t been to the border in more than a decade. On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki could only point to a “drive through” on the 2008 campaign trail.
The escalating crisis of overwhelming migration has led Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott take matters into his own hands. On Wednesday, the Center for Immigration Studies reported Abbott gave some 3,000 Texas National Guard troops the authority to arrest illegal immigrants for the first time ever under “Operation Lone Star.” Guard members were granted arrest powers this week after completion of “40 hours of traditional police training in the use of deadly force.”
“Nobody’s ever really used the guard before in this capacity,” said Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw in an interview with CIS. “We’re going to use them to actually secure the border. The governor, the legislature, and the citizens of Texas have made it very clear; they want the border secure. It is good for our federal partner as well. The federal government should be thanking the state of Texas, and it’ll make the rest of the country safer as we increase the level of security.”
The National Guard will be focused on hot-spot areas such as Del Rio to minimized the surge of migration in the absence of federal leadership. Neither women, unaccompanied children, or entire family units will be subject to state arrest.