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Washington (AFP) – Immigration control is the responsibility of the federal authorities and the states should not “meddle”, the White House warned this Friday, after the governor of Texas authorized the security forces to send migrants back to the border with Mexico. that they stop
The application of immigration law is the responsibility “of the federal authorities and the states should not … interfere in it,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre told a news conference.
On Thursday, the governor of Texas, Republican Greg Abbott, signed an executive order that empowers the National Guard and the Department of Public Safety “to detain immigrants who illegally cross the ports of entry and return them to the border” to, according to he, “protect Americans and secure the southern border.”
Abbott “has a history of causing chaos and confusion at the border,” said Karine Jean-Pierre.
In April, the governor decided to increase the inspection of trucks on the border with Mexico, which affected the flow of trade, and sent buses with undocumented migrants to Washington.
Another White House spokesman, Abdullah Hasan, said that Abbott’s past initiatives “do not inspire confidence in what he has prepared now.”
‘Operation Lone Star,’ a border security initiative launched in 2021 by Abbott in response to increased border crossings, which he attributes to President Joe Biden’s immigration policy, “put National Guardsmen and law enforcement in dangerous situations and caused a logistical nightmare,” added Hasan.
President Biden “is focused on real policy solutions to truly secure our border: installing new border technology, securing record levels of funding for the Department of Homeland Security, making more than 2,800 arrests in the first three months of launching a campaign against unprecedented smuggling,” he listed.
A week ago, the United States Supreme Court gave the Biden government the green light to end the Stay in Mexico program, launched by former Republican President Donald Trump in 2019 and which allows asylum seekers to be sent back to wait. the resolution of their cases on the other side of the border.
“Challenge to the Constitution”
The Texas executive order has provoked angry reactions.
Domingo Garcia, the president of the League of Latino American Citizens (LULAC), called on the United States attorney general and district attorneys in counties along the Mexican border to “investigate Governor Abbott and Lieutenant Governor (Dan ) Patrick for potential criminal and civil violations of federal and state law.”
This week, Dan Patrick said in an interview that “you need to get your hands on people and start sending them back,” referring to irregular migrants entering the United States.
Jeremy McKinney, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, agrees that Abbott’s decision “is morally reprehensible and unquestionably illegal.”
“The United States Constitution makes it clear that the application of immigration law (rests with) a federal authority” so the Biden government must “respond quickly with litigation,” he reacted.
Council of American Immigration political director Aaron Reichlin-Melnick warns that this “defiance of the Constitution … puts law enforcement officials in danger of breaking the law.”
“Migrants seeking safety, protection and a better life in the United States are not an invading army,” it adds in a statement.
The Mexican government attributes Abbott’s initiative “to a context of an electoral campaign in the state of Texas” in view of the mid-term legislative elections in November, which include those for governors.
The migration crisis will be one of the main issues that Biden will address with his Mexican counterpart Andrés Manuel López Obrador next Tuesday in Washington.
According to the Office of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), in May a new record was broken in the number of encounters with irregular migrants on the southern border of the United States (239,416), that is, each time one of them arrives and surrenders to an authority or when you try to cross and are stopped.
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